 
### Where are our Children: A Novel

### By Gary Sapp

### Copyright 2016 Gary Sapp

### The Complete and Uncut Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes

### This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Episode 1 411

Prologue: The Dying Man

Chapter One

Louis

Serena

Thomas

Chapter Two

Angel

Seth

Chapter Three

Chris

Xavier

Angel

Chris

Episode 2: Deliverance

Chapter Four

Roxanne

Thomas

Serena

Chapter Five

Xavier

Serena

Xavier

Angel

Chapter Six

Thomas

Chris

Louis

Episode 3 Rapture

Chapter Seven

Chris

Roxanne

Xavier

Chapter Eight

Louis

Roxanne

Angel

Roxanne

Chapter Nine

Seth

Chris

Louis

Episode 4 Past Prologue

Chapter Ten

Thomas

Xavier

Thomas

Chapter Eleven

Chris

Roxanne

Angel

Seth

Chapter Twelve

Chris

Xavier

Seth

Episode 5 Zero Hour

Chapter Thirteen

Louis

Chapter Fourteen

Thomas

Chris

Roxanne

Chapter Fifteen

Xavier

Serena

Angel

Chapter Sixteen

Seth

Thomas

Chris

Episode 6 Betrayal

Chapter Seventeen

Seth

Angel

Chapter Eighteen

Chris

Xavier

Serena

Chris

Chapter Nineteen

Roxanne

Louis

Thomas

Seth

Episode 7 Scar

Chapter Twenty

Serena

Seth

Thomas

Chris

Chapter Twenty One

Angel

Louis

Chapter Twenty Two

Roxanne

Chris

Serena

Seth

Episode 8 Tempest Rising

Chapter Twenty Three

Chris

Chapter Twenty Four

Angel

Chris

Hugh

Serena

Chapter Twenty Five

Thomas

Angel

Roxanne

Chapter Twenty Six

Serena

Thomas

Episode 9 Whirlwind

Chapter Twenty Seven

Angel

Chris

Thomas

Chapter Twenty Eight

Angel

Roxanne

Angel

Chris

Chapter Twenty Nine

Angel

Seth

Epilogue: Another Dying Man

Dedication

Nest Egg Publishing Note

No Rules Just Write: Nest Egg Publishing

Where to find this author Online
Episode 1: 411

Prologue: The Dying Man

The Dying Man told fellow inmate Xavier Prince and his other three assailants that he knew who murdered the first black president.

More importantly he knew _how,_ the real reason, not the drummed up one that had been manufactured for the entire world to believe.

He told them that Serena Tennyson and her Pandora associates had hoped that Adolphus Sweet's demise would accelerate the dissolution between the two most influential races in this country forever.

He'd told them while South Georgia's early afternoon March sunlight glistened through the cold prison bars of Calhoun State Prison; behind all of the inmates warming an otherwise brittle corridor.

He'd told them through gasp of stolen breaths from his broken ribs, through blood gushing through his mouth and nose, thanks in no small part to Xavier's muscle that had accompanied him up here.

He spat out a mouthful of bruised blood.

And then he told them that a further escalation of this dissolution was coming.

And soon.

Yet, the dying man was no fool. He had no loyalty to Serena or her cause, so he'd be willing to spill his beans about the when and the where...for a price.

Chow will be over in minutes. This hallway will soon flood with inmates and correction officers. It's still my game to win, Runt.

Using his tongue, Xavier Prince slid his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, stole a quick glance at the cracked face of the clock striking 12:30 pm on the molded wall... _tic_... _tock_... _tic_... _tock_ , and shook his head once and then again, _no deal._

Xavier Prince:

He was an undersized black man in his early 40's whose reputation and presence, The Dying Man thought, seemed to cast a much larger shadow behind the figurine that wielded it. Xavier's skin tone was like charcoal; he wore his hair cropped short and his sideburns thick around his ears. He had a drunkards eyes and nicotine stains on his teeth. Xavier allowed the silence to have its moment. He had long been rumored to be a man of few words, even now. Though when he had chosen to speak his voice resonated smooth, silky, like the sweetest taboo. In addition, every one of his movements seemed measured or calculated, and he pimped more than he walked.

Xavier spoke at last. "Once, someone very dear to me said that beams of sunlight radiating throughout small pockets of space like in this very room were like the eyes of God himself piercing through. And that the guilty shied away from this light for fear of His judgment raining upon them."

So when Michael Davenport, The Dying Man, failed to accept Xavier's offer of life in exchange for his information, the leader of A House in Chains ordered the other man silenced forever.

The largest of his executioners, with biceps the size of barbells, unsheathed a machete and got on with the business of dislodging The Dying Man's sorry head from the remainder of his body.

Fearing his end coming...or perhaps something as simple as sheer curiosity caused The Dying man to use the final seconds of his life watching Xavier Prince instead of the machete's edge swinging to greet him.

Tic.

Once, someone very dear to Xavier Prince said that beams of sunlight radiating throughout small pockets of space like in this very room were like the eyes of God piercing through. And that the guilty shy away from this light for fear of His judgment raining on them.

Tock:

At the instant that the machete's blade severed Davenport's curiosity—and his head—he watched Xavier Prince step backwards into the light.

And he let God's judgment rain upon him.
Chapter One

Alright Listeners, we have a caller waiting on line three. Go ahead, caller, you're on the air.

Hi, Larry. Thanks for taking my call. I love your show by the way. I listen in every day. My guess is that the 411 has to be the grand opening of Atlanta's newest upscale nightclub in Buckhead. You know, Larry, where the party is at.

-An unnamed caller's entry into the 'What is the 411'contest by 104.5 Hip Hop FM
Louis

**Andrew Young Youth Center, NW Atlanta, 1** st **day**

The car bomb performed impressively.

The initial blast shattered glass, scattered debris and launched crimson and mustard colored shrapnel in a maddening rush that illuminated Atlanta's late evening skyline with what remained of the Andrew Young Youth Center.

The flames licked rows upon rows of shotgun houses and invited those structures to join this fiery party.

It was a bomb that had taken on a life all its own and knew exactly where and when to strike.

It was a bomb that seemed to know _too_ much.

Just like Serena had told him that it would.

Louis Keaton:

He was a pocket sized man nearing 60 years old. He had those deep blue eyes that eerily never seemed lose their focus or intensity and refused to blink. He wore his hair, long since gray and thin, combed backwards against his skull. He was dressed tonight in what he playfully had coined as his battle gear: A denim jacket, flannel shirt, faded jeans and ankle length cowboy boots made for walking.

Now he ducked for relative safety underneath the brim of a shed 200 or so feet from the bomb's epicenter. He'd spied the locale during one of his many reconnaissance ventures down here over the past month. Serena had assured the old man that the more he was familiar with his surroundings—and his escape route—the more he increased his odds of surviving this night.

Yet, his preordained location had provided something else unexpected as well.

He watched in part fascination...in part horror, as three bystanders—two men and one woman—were killed by the youth center's falling debris. He could hear the sirens of first responder units blaring from miles away, but drawing closer with each measured breath he took. _Though they won't arrive in time to save these poor bastards_ , he thought. And of course, per protocols, a police helicopter or two would sure to take flight soon. _I mustn't be here when they arrive. I can't let them see me. I can't_. Louis had been instructed by Serena to walk with a steady stride, and then accelerate his pace...and finally _run_ when he was sure he was far beyond seeing eyes, all while not drawing attention to his presence in the first place.

" _Oh My God_ ," Louis heard a voice cry out into the night. " _Can anyone save the children inside?_ "

_What children is she talking about?_ Louis asked himself. But then he'd sworn on Elvis' life and death that he'd heard another female stranger approaching from a side street begging for someone—a _nyone_ to save her two nephews who were supposed to be playing a game of pickup basketball inside the gym.

Now dozens of people were frantically racing towards the inferno babbling about young loved ones who were probably trapped inside as well.

Unconsciously, Louis Keaton took a half dozen steps towards the blaze when a young black man wearing black tee shirt, khakis, and sneakers crushed him underneath his weight with a devastating tackle.

He is a Peacekeeper. You're screwed. You should have left this place when you had the chance.

Louis had been warned by Serena to avoid these young men and women, the military right hand of A House in Chains at all cost. The younger man, dressed in a black hoody, khakis' and sneakers swore at Louis and screamed at him to stay out of the damned way and let the trained professionals do their jobs. _His_ type shouldn't be down here anyway.

_And what_ type _is that, my young friend?_ He thought between baited breaths. _I was shedding tears for men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr on the day of his murder, years before your parents were born._

The memory didn't serve Louis well. Now, all the old man could do was remember that fateful afternoon, when he was just a scrawny teenager, back home in Memphis, Tennessee. And he remembered how the colored kids, who had previously claimed to be his friends, punched and kicked and spit on him while he walked home from school after the principal had delivered the devastating news over the intercom system before the day's final bell rang.

Now, tonight, he desperately wanted to save these children, but he didn't want to be punched, kicked, or spit on by these People of Color. That was the term that most Blacks used to identify their race in today's society.

Louis pushed himself to his feet, felt for the detonation mechanism that should have still been lying in his jacket pocket. He moved away from the young Peacekeeper who had attacked him and made his way up half a block, before he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder.

Groups upon groups of hysterical family members, worried onlookers, and otherwise concerned citizens had huddled together, locked fingers with one another and held each other for strength. They began chanting something unfathomable for him to understand at his great distance. The chanting soon quieted. These same people were crying now and the tears soon led to expressions of grief and finally that grief grew into anguish.

In that moment Louis Keaton remembered asking Serena, after one of their meditation sessions weeks ago, why she hated People of Color so passionately to order this attack against them.

_I never said that I hated them, Louis._ She had looked taken aback. _But I will not allow A House_ _in Chains_ _to destroy what so many of our forefathers, on both sides of the color barrier, have worked to diligently to build together in this country._

Louis had nodded at her response, but thought there had to be something a great deal more personal in this for her. Serena must have had read his thoughts because she added _, the finest man I've ever known sacrificed_ everything _to further the cause of People of Color. And I do mean_ everything. _Now, too many of them abuse his sacrifice. Many of them breed like rabbits. They can be cruel to one another. And too many of them are uneducated, unreliable and act too uncivilized to contribute to the world around them._

Louis Keaton heard the police helicopter flying nearby, yanking him back into the present, and reminded him of the danger that he faced if he dared hang around here any longer. And he knew that he had to go right _now_ or all would be lost. So he stole one final glance at the family members, the onlookers, the everyday citizens. He looked at them all, still locked arm in arm.

He knew there is a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella and fellowship.

Even the uncivilized knew this too be true.

He found Serena Tennyson, Danielle Rohm, and three other Pandora agents dining at one of the upscale restaurants lining the cobblestone streets three miles from where his route began. The stench of burning concrete and ignited fertilizer was replaced by the smell of grilled chicken, the sound of crying supplanted by laughter and a dozen different delightful conversations.

"Why didn't you tell me that children would be inside of the youth center when the bomb was detonated?" Louis asked Serena with some gruff. He was gassed and struggled to catch his breath. "I specifically remember our simulations involved detonating an explosive at an abandoned building with a triggering device as merely a symbolic gesture during the early hours of 411."

"I gave you instructions to be carried out, a target." Serena Tennyson said coldly. The suggestion rattling around in her hushed tone that he should wisely sit down in the seat she was offering him and match her serene tone.

Serena Tennyson:

She was a long and athletic looking redhead in her early 40's. In Louis' experience, most men would say that she was more handsome than beautiful with her understated makeup and her hair tied in a bun; and she often looked more sophisticated than sexy in her tailored pants suits and short jackets. Although tonight she wore a gray sweat suit and had a ring of sweat drying in the area neckline and above her small breast. She had a long neck, accompanying freckles, and the next time someone stumbled upon a smile curving her thin lips, it would be their first. Hard is what her associates called her—in hushed voices well out of hearing, of course—and hard she was.

When Louis wisely sat down across from her she said, "The simulations were programmed to present you with many different variables that you could face as you carried out your assignment tonight. I kept the specific details of this operation confidential to guarantee Pandora's success even if you were injured or captured—as you nearly were."

Louis waved a trembling index finger up at her.

"Don't play word games with me, Serena." When Oracle's gaze hardened, as the operatives often referred to her in the field, Louis felt his finger feebly fall back on the table. "Please. I don't wish to be responsible for hurting anyone else." He said, refusing to compete in her gaze staring contest any longer. "I am many things, but I am not a heartless killer."

"That is a noble sentiment of you, Louis." Serena said. She stopped long enough to take a long pull from her bottle of water. There were three empty containers in her vicinity. She was hydrating herself, but for what? "And yet, you need to be aware and understand how pivotal your role is in this game we are playing; this game that Pandora must come through as victorious. I want you to relax your thoughts for one minute. I want you to imagine that you and I are sitting perched atop the highest snowcapped mountain in the entire world." Serena raised her hand high above her red hair as if she were demonstrating her words to a dull child. "We're high up here. Everest. We are at her peak. Tonight, we unleashed an avalanche—so devastating, so lethal in its power and intensity that we're hopeful that it will crush our adversaries completely and absolutely while it is on a downwards path. As this game draws closer towards finality, we hope each choice we make will derail our enemy's resolve, ensuring the least amount of casualties on both sides as possible."

"An avalanche, you say?" He had to admit her crude proclamation made sense. "Yes, I guess I see your point clearer."

"You've served our cause—your _country's_ cause, well tonight." Serena suppressed a smile and got to her feet, her subordinates hurrying to follow her lead as if she had shouted at them. "We all thank you for your efforts. I know this was not an easy assignment."

"I said that I see your point," Louis replied, running both hands through his thinning hair. "I didn't say that I felt any better about what I've done tonight. I feel so... _evil_."

Serena flashed her first air of inpatients of the evening and planted her hands on her slim hips. The younger of the two women, Danielle Rohm smoothly stepped into the vacant space between Louis and Serena, pried his hands open with her own and squeezed his wrinkled fingers.

Danielle Rohm:

She was on the right side of 30, pale, petite, and wore her jet black hair in a single braid that ran the length of her spine. Louis knew she kept at least one pistol strapped to her thigh just out of sight. She was dressed entirely in black. She was _always_ dressed in black.

"Louis, you do understand that you sent those children to a far better eternity than their lives could have been here, in this life _._ " Danielle Rohm kept her voice low so that any stranger nearby wouldn't overhear their damning conversation. "And you did this without them suffering any unnecessary pain or suffering. Their deaths were likely instantaneous."

Serena had frowned in irritation at the younger woman's unsolicited input. "I'm sure he does."

"Yes." Louis said in his quiet voice. "I guess that I do."

"Good." Serena nodded in Rohm's direction while never taking her gaze off of Louis. Although the younger woman had aided in restoring some semblance of order, Serena was likely to reprimand her for her unsolicited interference, especially in front of the others. Louis did not envy Shooter over the coming hours. "What do I require of you now, Louis? Remember our sessions, all of those hours we've spent together over the past six months readying you for tonight's events and those that lie beyond."

Louis stood a little taller and lifted his chin. "I am to proceed to our previously agreed upon location. I am to promptly finish setting up a temporary sanctuary for our coming visitors."

"And,"

"And I am to continue mastering my meditation techniques. I should exercise balancing my breathing patterns with an emphasis on maintaining my calmness and concentration."

"Good, Louis." Serena folded her arms. "And finally,"

He searched the starred skyline a second for guidance, buttoned his jacket against the night's chill, and then nodded assuredly. "And finally, I should stay out of site and await your signal for me to reassume my _work_ , Serena."

"Good." Serena raised his chin with two of her long fingers. "I want you to understand that I have the upmost confidence in you. Tonight, only solidifies my belief that you are the right man for this job... _Hugh_."

Louis snatched himself away from her touch. An old anger—one that he long thought that he'd suppressed forever, rose up seemingly in his chest so abruptly that he wondered if he could maintain his discipline and contain it. One of the other agents' noted Louis' rapid change in demeanor and placed his palm on the butt of his sidearm, while Danielle Rohm did the same, while placing her tiny frame between Louis and Serena.

" _Louis_ ," He bit his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. "My name is Louis. I'm Louis Keaton of Memphis, Tennessee."

Serena placed a hand on Rohm's shoulder and the younger woman slid to one side, eyed Louis the entire time, while never unlatching her fingers off of her weapon's trigger.

"I guess we've arrived to this point where you would expect a heartfelt apology from me." Serena twisted her long neck ever so slightly to her right, studying his ocean blue eyes that never seemed to blink. "Sorry, I don't think I'll be able to find the words. Hugh Keaton. He _is_ who you are, your true self. And Hugh Keaton _is_ a monster. He is a monster who, with the right amount of guidance or nurturing, can achieve greatness in the days to come. I was a fool for listening to Doctor Angel Hicks-Dupree when I allowed her to cage the real you, the _complete_ you. This Louis caricature is but a seashell on a beach. Why would you accept being a simple seashell or even being the beach itself, when you can assume the identity of the entire ocean if you wish it?"

"Please refrain from calling me by that name." Louis said to all who would listen. "I am _Louis_ Keaton. I am but a _shell_ of that seashell that you were mentioning before. I'm a seashell trying to keep from being washed away by that ocean." Louis swallowed hard. "But I won't fail you. You have my word, Serena, that I won't fail you..."

Serena said, "We'll speak on this matter again at length after your progress at the sanctuary is completed. Go now...my friend. Your work here is at an end."

Louis felt all of their judgmental eyes upon him as he turned to leave. He decided that it was still in his immediate interest to serve Pandora overall and Serena's wishes in particular. But that didn't take any of the sting out of learning that many innocent, beautiful children were killed by his hand...and then to make matters worse, Serena addressing him by that terrible name.

_We're okay, for now, Louis._ A voice deep inside of him said; a voice far too dark, too familiar for his liking, a voice that he'd hope never to hear again. _At least we know exactly where we stand with the others especially that bitch Serena. We take care of our own. We are here for us, Louis. We won't let_ anyone _hurt us again._

And we will kill anyone who tries.

The Dragon must have been watching over Serena, because she had her sixth sense working and felt a sense of danger emerging in the night's chill. Nonchalantly, she slid smoothly between Rohm and the other two agents, while they all conversed.

There is a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella of company and fellowship.

Even Serena Tennyson knew this to be true.
Serena

**Bank of America Plaza (40** th **Floor); Midtown Atlanta, 1** st **day**

Serena Tennyson's knees ached as she rose to her feet after she'd finished her prayer. _Damn these knees,_ she'd struggled with bouts of arthritis, tendonitis, and inflammation in both of them since she'd turned 40. And the miles that she'd accumulated with her runs over the past six months of getting back into shape, had stressed them beyond any training she'd done before. _Yet_ , _Keaton's success is a major step forward toward our ultimate goals. My turn comes soon. I must be ready. I_ will _be ready._

Still, while the irony that Pandora's founder, The Caretaker, had assigned her the field name of Oracle because of her _gifts_ , yet her pediatrician from all of those years ago, and had rightly predicted the degenerative failing of her health from knee down when she reached middle age hadn't sat well with her.

What she once would categorize as no more than a mere nuisance, was rapidly shifting into something far more serious. She could only hope that the knee replacement that that same doctor had predicted would hold off for at least a few years longer.

Fighting chills, Serena toweled her forehead off. Serena's body left her in the odd position of both warming up and rapidly cooling down after her run when her group had disbanded after her conversation with Keaton. In the past this sensation had caused her to feel anxious. She took another long pull of water from her bottle even after her initial thirst had been quenched. The drink's temperature was at room temperature and she downed half the bottle easily down her throat. Oracle's hydration would be critical over the next few days. She was a lifetime removed from being 17, and a three time state champion defending marathon runner.

_It is time to concentrate on more immediate things._ Serena tossed a hand full of sacred sand into the flames into her hotel room's fireplace. The flames responded by rising as they had always had before. When she had been on her knees before, she'd asked the human god to spare as many lives as possible. Keaton's attack on the Andrew Young Center now was two hours old and had served as the possible opening salvo in what could turn out to be an ugly war. She'd prayed a Christian prayer, and the followed it up with the same appeal in Islam. She'd studied both religions as well as dozens of others for a general understanding and some...entertainment they often provided her. She didn't believe that any of these superstitions had any true substance at their core—of course not—but she felt it was necessary to honor the fallen...and those who were still to fall in the tongue of their own faith.

She was loyal to the calling of the Dragon.

And in the Dragon's inferno, Serena saw all of the vision, clarity, and sense of purpose she deemed necessary.

She was no longer alone in this room—

"Speak your mind, Rohm," Serena said without turning away from the Dragon's flames. "Speak your mind or leave me in peace."

Rohm cleared her throat. "If you have a moment to spare, I'd like to speak to you about Louis Keaton."

"What about him?"

"You've done a masterful job with him, Serena."

Serena finally spun away from the fire. "And you came to this conclusion all by yourself, Rohm." Serena didn't attempt to strike the sarcasm from her tone. She'd never had much use for professional assassins; even this highly recommended killer who murdered on demand, yet looked the part of a high school senior. Anyone with training could be a cold calculated shooter. Serena admired those who were far more intimate and _personal_ with their murdering. "How wonderful for you, Rohm, I'm impressed. You're future in this organization certainly is very bright."

If Rohm had been embarrassed or even angered by Serena's tirade she didn't express it on her pale face. And in truth, that only angered Serena further.

"May I speak freely, Serena?"

_Now this should be interesting._ "This is still America, Rohm, and you haven't been drafted. Say what you will."

Rohm cleared her throat again. _This child is serious._

"There are more than an a few agents in important positions within our group who are... _apprehensive_ about Louis' further participation in our plans.

"Really," Serena asked in a serious tone. Many of these men and women who served the cause of the Caretaker had come from all fields of professional service to their country: Some were former and other current military, secret service, FBI, CIA, and other experts who joined Pandora in droves and now had been placed under her command. How others measured her skills in handling Louis Keaton had honestly never crossed her mind. _But perhaps it should have?_ "What do you think, Rohm?" Serena wanted to know.

Considering how Serena had treated Rohm since she'd entered the room, in addition to the one sided chat she had with her for interrupting her conversation with Keaton back on the street, there was little wonder to why the woman dressed in black hesitated to answer her now.

Serena unfolded her arms and relaxed her stance as to not appear confrontational. "Talk to me, Danielle. I want to know what you are thinking."

"Alright," Rohm said. "I'll be perfectly honest, Serena, I wasn't convinced Louis Keaton would be able to hold his emotions in check long enough to complete tonight's assignment, even if he wasn't aware of every minute detail." She added "I wasn't convinced until he stood up to you both before and after your comment about needing _Hugh_ to take the lead for his upcoming responsibilities."

"That little detail changed your mind?"

"Actually, Serena, _you_ changed it?"

"Me? How do you mean?"

Rohm seemed to relax a little, letting her guard down. "You've been giving him strenuous mental exercises over the past few months. You've been building up his poise from the inside out, boosting his confidence. Tonight served as a marker for you and for him on his progress." Rohm eyed one of the plush couches that populated the Bank of America Hotel and Suites living area in this room. Serena could never get comfortable on the damn thing. In fact, other than the fireplace and the piano, she neither had little use nor desire for such luxuries.

"Please Rohm, sit down."

"Thank you."

Serena beckoned the other woman to continue.

Rohm crossed her leg, exposing her pistol for Serena to see it in its full glory. "I'm guessing that tonight was very important to see how much growth Louis had actually experienced. Your ultimate expectation of him will likely drain him both mentally, physically, and especially emotionally. If I know you like I think I do, you likely have one or two more tasks for him to complete before he is to begin his work as you say."

Serena planted her butt on the arm of the loveseat next to Rohm.

"Damn. I'm impressed." And she was. "You've hit on all of the finer points, Danielle. Every accomplishment aids in him building a solid psychological foundation and more importantly, drives a caged Hugh to the surface."

"I have every confidence that you both will succeed."

Both women drink in the silence of the next minute. Rohm had earned Serena's respect tonight, if only begrudging so. Rohm had a deeper intellect than just that of a cold hearted killer. The grown woman with an adolescent's body was marinating in those good feelings. Serena thought she noticed an eyebrow cock with an unasked question on the younger woman's face.

"You want to ask me something," Serena said. "Perhaps you want to share another observation?"

"I'm not sure if I want to tear down the goodwill we've built tonight, Serena. I'm not interested in embarrassing you."

"Go ahead, Danielle," Serena said. "It's alright. I promise to keep an open mind."

"Okay," Rohm hesitated, and then seemed to find her voice again. "I was standing here in the doorway a lot longer than when you finally felt my presence. I saw you...praying."

Serena stood up again, as tall as her thin frame allowed in defiance, but this attempt at toughness was empty, because she felt her cheeks flushing. _Hard_ is what her associates called her—in hushed voices _not_ as well out of hearing as they'd might of thought, of course—and hard she was.

"I was." Serena explained her point on respecting her enemy's religion even if she obviously didn't share that faith. When she had finished she said, "Does my position upset you in any way?"

"No, Serena, of course not," Rohm answered quickly and reached her shooter's hand down into her blouse pulling a gold cross out from beneath her tiny breast. I'm a devout Christian. I love our God."

"You're a Christian?"

Rohm let out a giggle, "Don't sound so surprised, Serena."

"Forgive me, Rohm," Serena said in all seriousness. "It's not every day that someone who earns a living from killing people claims Christianity as their faith of choice. Somewhere in that Bible of yours there is a passage that says: _thy shall not kill."_

Rohm nodded. "That's fair enough point, Serena. I'm a shooter. It's a skill I've developed over the years. Yet, since I've joined Pandora, I feel that ultimately I'm in the business of saving people."

"Aren't you mincing words?"

"Am I?" Rohm asked. Rohm stood in the space directly in front of Serena, her fragrance smelled expensive. Serena didn't wear perfume—it felt sticky and _disgusting_ when it dried on her skin. "Working for Pandora isn't all about the money...well _most_ of it isn't, at least not for me. I believe in _you_ , Serena. And because I believe in you, I have faith that our cause is a just one. "

Rohm took another step, violating Serena's personal space as few who still lived had, if she saw the older woman's discomfort level grow it did not stop her. In fact, Rohm enclosed Serena's long fingers in her child like hand. "We're doing God's work. This is a holy war for our time. We are in the business of reaching hearts and minds, of saving lives, saving a nation." Rohm's voice fell into a near whisper. "Pandora is not an organization of hate mongers as some in the media claim that we are. We're patriots. A House in Chains is a real threat to destabilizing all that people of all races and colors have fought and died trying to build."

Before tonight, Serena would have dismissed this younger woman as some type of religious zealot with a fantasy of serving her god with missions of grander. But Serena knew that Rohm actually _believed_ in what she had said to her. _First, this cold hearted killer exhibits a degree of intellect and now she expresses that she has a foundation based in spiritually, will tonight's wonders ever cease._

The handle on the front door twisted open and Rohm had her pistol detached from her thigh, the safety off, and the barrel pointed at the figure that was walking it. Serena marveled at the woman's efficiency, yet felt taken aback that this same woman, who was speaking about her love of her lord, was prepared to send another human being to His judgment in one fell swoop.

"I'm interrupting." Pilot said.

"Of course not, sir," Rohm answered first. She lowered the barrel of her pistol. "Just engaging a little girl talk to past the time until you arrived."

"I could come back—"

"Nonsense, sir, as Danielle said, we were expecting you." Serena said smoothly. We were done with our talk."

"Yes. We were."

Rohm started to dismiss herself when Pilot steeped into her path.

"Champion's back on the radar, Shooter." Pilot said, and then he looked up as Serena. "He turned up right where you said that he would."

Rohm's big brown eyes brightened a bit with a task, a target, and her hand went to the holster on her thigh almost automatically. "If both of you will excuse me, I have work to do."

The lock on the door snapped shut behind Rohm. Serena folded her arms, all business again after the song and dance with Rohm, and she waited in patient silence for Pilot to drive where this conversation and their movement went next.

Pilot stank of stale cigarette smoke. He took a sip of his coffee. "What's our status, Serena?"

She gave him a brief but detailed synopsis of what has transpired over the past 18 to 24 hours. There are anywhere from 35 to 50 unconfirmed deaths from the car bomb explosion at the Andrew Young Youth Center and the first night of the Siege at The Fox Theatre. The big four networks and CNN had rightly named Pandora as the primary suspects, though at least half of these news outlets weren't aware of the siege at the Fox Theatre as of yet, or they were slow to get around reporting it.

A small minority of journalist and talking heads believed that this was terrorist attack from another extremist domestic group, with a handful of reporters saying this is but a first strike in a larger offensive by Al Qaeda or Isis on US soil.

Pilot had to laugh at the absurdity of their conclusions.

She told him as a side note, that Atlanta's city officials were planning a memorial hours from now near the youth center, but as the siege at the Fox Theatre gains footing, they'll be putting such activities on the backburner for now if not definitely.

"That's the right call on their part." Pilot said, draining the last bit of coffee out of his cup. "People of Color should be weary of assembling masses of people in a single place."

Serena said, "Everything considered, this operation is going even better than we could have expected at this point."

"I'm counting on a snag along the way; in fact Benny Stanton should have had his folks out of that theatre by now." He pointed the coffee cup at her. "Has then been any response from Xavier's people? I would have expected to at least hear from members of The Circle by now."

Serena shook her head. She'd counted on at least a verbally prepared response herself by now.

Pilot looked as if his brown suit was squeezing him in a tender area.

"I don't like all the risk your plan entails, moving forward."

"You signed off on it, sir."

"I know what I signed off on, Serena." Pilot said with some gruff. He let the moment of anger pass and gathered himself. "And I stand by my signature and my word.

Pilot had been an effective leader. He wasn't the Caretaker to be sure, but men who were like the founder of Pandora were few and far between.

Pilot:

He was a... _no,_ Serena thought to herself. He was an anonymous figure to her, nothing more. He was a shadow, a thought, a memory. If she were captured or tortured by any a number of adversaries, she couldn't be threatened or compromised to give up Caretaker's successor, because she couldn't readily identify a man she's never truly _seen._

"I still don't have to _like_ your plan, even if it strategically makes a hell of a lot of sense."

"I'll respectfully remind you that Caretaker specifically left me in charge of the planning and fulfillment of 411, sir. Ultimately, this entire operation is my responsibility. He also left explicit orders for Pandora to accomplish all our objectives with as little bloodshed as we could reasonably manage." Serena said. "My proposal raises the odds that we could reach our objectives while simultaneously honoring all of Caretaker's wishes. With your blessing, I mean to see this through to whatever conclusion that my plan leads me to. I'm not afraid."

Pilot had no answer for that; instead he became restless as if the spot he was standing would hold him there no longer. "Your proposal is bordering somewhere between crazy and suicidal." Caretaker never intended for Pandora to function with you in the field and having a maniac like Louis Keaton unleashed on the public at the same time. Tell me he would have wanted this?"

"Maybe not," She had to admit. She turned and made her away to the giant window and peered out into Midtown and the suburbs of Cobb and Gwinnett Counties far to the North of their location. This night would be the end of the world as so many had known it. _The end,_ she mused, _or perhaps the beginning of a new world order starting here, starting now._

And if The House in Chains did not stand down, as she feared they would not, even she could not guarantee if anyone involved would be left standing once the next offensive began. And what if her enemies forced her to unleash the full-fledged wrath of The Whirlwind? _What is the shape of things to come?_ She asked herself. And when the day arrived that her nemeses would reach their end and it was as terrible as they imagined it would be... _after all, we are all given to the flames._

Pilot surprised her by taking his place next to her, standing in front of the fire. He even ran his hands through the sacred sand, allowing the texture and roughness of the gravel massage his knuckles. Ordinarily, Serena would have taken offense at a non-believer violating tradition by touching the sacred sand without invitation. _But this night has been full of wonders already._ And she was otherwise fascinated watching his reactions.

"You're not a believer in the ways of the Dragon." Serena said without anger.

"No, I'm not," He said, and removed his hand from the sand and took a respectful step back away from the fireplace. "You _do_ believe, Serena. That makes all of _this_ meaningful enough for me."

She grabbed half a handful of the sand and tossed it into the fire. The flames came to life, twice as large as they did when she thought she occupied the room alone.

"What do you see?" Pilot asked her.

"Death," She said. "Death is all the flames ever show me, sir. It is in the air all around us."

"Oh, yea, I'm sure." The non-believers always took the gift of prophecy far too lightly. She pitied him. She pitied all who did not grow to learn and love the ways of the Dragon. "Do you see anyone I know in there?"

She studied the flames for a minute then. She never blinked and the intensity of the flames caused her eyes to tear. Pilot wiped at his brow and loosened his tie. He was unsure how to take her reaction. Serena failed to care.

"Xavier Prince." She finally said.

"He has been resourceful. He has escaped us."

"He has escaped us _so far_." Serena added, and then tossed another handful before the man could comment again. The flames jumped to even a higher level...and its revelation startled even her, left her breathless for a moment.

"Who did you see, Serena?" He asked, and when she failed to answer immediately. "Damn you woman, I asked you a question."

"Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree." She said more to herself than to Pilot.

"You sound surprised."

Serena nodded. She did not say aloud, _Angel is going to suffer from something far more traumatic than even death is before her end._ Something compelled Serena to toss in one more handful of sand.

The flames popped and crackled and a flicker jumped out of the fireplace and landed on the forearm of her left hand.

"Are you are alright?" Pilot said, and reached across to her to fan the budding flame. "You're _burning_ —"

Serena planted a firm right hand into his chest to stop his advancement. She threw her head back and the smallest smile grazed her lip as she mouthed out of gasp what could be described as a bout of intense _pain—_ intense _pleasure_ wrapped its arms around her.

"I saw an imminent death." She said when she had opened her eyes again, the moment of...near orgasm passed into infinity. "That is why the flames were so intense."

"Who did you see?"

"Our esteemed Mayor Ernestine Johnson may not survive till dawn. And when she reaches her end, and it is as terrible as she imagined it would be, she will be given to the flames."
Thomas

**Mayor Jonson's Private Estate; SW Atlanta, 2** nd **Day**

He checked the clock's time on the jaguar's dash, spun the wheels in a perfect motion, and fit the car in the last open parking spot reserved for the media in front of Mayor Johnson's estate in southwest Atlanta.

He bumped his head getting out of his car which added to this morning's frustrations. He checked his Rolex, 7:50 AM; at least he had a few minutes more to spare before the 8:15 presser, although he'd earned a $300 speeding ticket for his efforts. _Damn._

Thomas Pepper:

He was a big man the way sports fans considered retired hockey players big men. He always stood fully erect, totally comfortable and satisfied with his height and weight. He had a squared jaw, with a spectrum of salt, pepper, and oregano colors running through his curly hair and his day old beard that looked like a _two_ day old beard on most other men. Although he was wearing a fresh custom-made suit it couldn't mask the faint stench of perfume and stale sex leaking from his pores.

At 6'3"tall he fit better in his other vehicle, the Escalade, but enjoyed the speed and the thrills of driving the Jaguar more. Besides, he always caught more female attention when he drove up in this ride. Last night Sheila, at least that's what he thought he remembered her name being, had been crazy about this car and begged Thomas for a ride around town. _She was a real cutie too._ She even insisted that he park the Jaguar in front of her house she and her husband, an architect who often worked well after midnight as deadlines on projects approached, where he spent a night a passion with her.

Thomas had been to the mayor's estate countless times now. He'd grown accustomed to seeing the atrium double as the entrance to an impromptu press room. What _did_ surprise him was the near standing room crowd of press, well known athletes, entertainers, and local business people who had been invited to whatever in the hell was going on here.

It didn't escape Thomas that most of the attendants were People of Color.

Thomas flashed his press credentials to a chicken legged servant who knew him by face and who barely scanned the paperwork over at all. Yet, another stone faced man wearing a khaki suit and sneakers, a Peacekeeper, asked to see the identification for himself, studied it with more of a sense of scrutiny, smiled, and asked Thomas to take his numbered seat in the gallery.

Thomas thanked the second man carefully, read his number nine aloud, and identified his chair in the front row — right next to Lucy Burgess.

"Thomas? Good morning, Darling." She patted the tin, unpadded seat next to her when he arrived at the front row. "I saved a spot for you, do sit down."

Lucy Burgess:

She was a mid-sized White South African, who had golden shoulder length hair and had a huge overbite.

She dropped her sharpie just as he fit himself in the space around him that was designed for man nearly half his size. Alright, he'd play the part of a gentleman and pick up her pen for her...and saw that Lucy had parted her legs just enough for him to see that she was wearing blood red panties underneath her skirt. He couldn't help but grin—and take a small gander—before working to reseat himself and hand her the sharpie back. _Lucy,_ he thought, _you haven't changed a bit have you?_

She showed the good sense to cross her leg before any of the pack of people on the podium could notice. "I was starting to believe that you were hiding from me, Thomas." Lucy's eyes darted down to her lap. "We've missed you so much. How long has it been now?"

"I don't honestly know, but you know me, Lucy," Thomas replied. "I'm always so busy, you know working."

"Working," She drew close enough to take a deep whiff of his jacket. "I can tell. She wears Channel Number Five. This fragrance was a limited edition back in all but the most exquisite spring catalogs. At least she has impressive taste...or perhaps her _husband_ does. And you, my darling Thomas, you never fail to impress me with your tenacity. She never stood a chance of you not bedding her did she? The Jaguar drove her over the edge didn't it; your slightly wrinkled suit should have given that fact right away. And I call myself a reporter."

Thomas felt himself redden a little, the anger catching hold. He shifted his weight in the little chair.

"How is Bill?"

Now it was his former lover's turn to squirm, and he felt a perverse pleasure in her discomfort in spite of his best efforts.

"My husband has taken up residence with a 26 year old. I'm sure she has lost all of her baby teeth by now. And she happens to be the daughter of a self-made millionaire." Lucy said with a smile that held no humor, smoothing out her skirt as she spoke. "You see, Thomas, you are not the only man in Fulton County blessed with the finer taste in life."

"So was our dear William forced to endure you're patented sad face or maybe even a round or two of crocodile tears falling from your eyes? Or did you go so far as to unleash a full-fledged tantrum this time and pick up something irreplaceable in the house and throw it at him?"

One of the men on the podium tapped at the microphone, an equipment check, and used the opportunity to tell one and all that proceedings were running a few minutes behind schedule. And that everyone's patience was greatly appreciated.

Meanwhile, even Lucy's humorless smile had vanished. And it looked as she remembered something that made her uneasy when she looked down at her flats. "We're selling the house. Bill has chosen to keep this conquest. My services as his token wife are no longer needed. I've been staying at the Ambassador Hotel in Midtown for the past three weeks." Lucy slid over closer to Thomas and then a sly, familiar smile lit up her face once more. "At least he's footing the bill. And I didn't throw a damned thing at him. I refuse to play the part of the unsuspecting wife that my poor, pitiful American counterparts fail so miserably at. He has had his affairs. I have had mine. In fact I told him about you."

Thomas sat up straight in his chair. "Why in the hell would you do a thing like that?"

Lucy ran a manicured fingernail over his lips. "As you Americans are fond of saying, do turn that frown upside down, darling." She said. "Believe it or not, not everyone in the known universe or even here in Northern Georgia knows who Thomas Pepper, journalist, blogger, and best-selling author is."

Still, Thomas swallowed hard. "Well, I hope that everything works out, you know, with your marriage, the way you wish that it will."

Lucy glanced away and her sly smile vanished as if it never existed. "I sincerely doubt that it will."

Thomas followed her gaze. Two men dressed in white lab coats were being escorted to the podium with some haste. Thomas grabbed Lucy's wrist and pointed with his other hand, to the mayor's husband who was standing and looking miserable near the podium as well. Lucy nodded an agreement at his silent observation. The poor bastard looked as if he hadn't slept in weeks.

"Do you have any idea what this is about?"

"Well, darling, a bombing in your city where you are an elected official might prompt a press conference or two."

"That's not what I mean." Thomas rubbed at his day old beard. He haired up so fast. "The Doctors. Antonio Johnson. The almost alarming presence of the Peacekeepers in the room, it all feels so very... _personal_."

"Personal, darling," Lucy said. "The end of the world as you and your American cohorts has that effect sometimes."

"The attack on the Andrew Young Center while tragic, doesn't qualify as the end of the world, Lucy. President Sweet's assassination caused days of violence in the streets, but somehow order was reinstated and that peace has held its course since."

Lucy said, "Tell me you are not that naïve."

Thomas grunted and shifted in his hard little chair growing smaller and harder by the minute. He _does_ know better actually. Speculation was growing that Serena Tennyson and Pandora were behind this attack at the Andrew Young Center. They had yet to officially claim responsibility, but he was sure that fact would change shortly. Thomas had been granted several interviews with Serena before he published his second book on race relations in America. In the hours they'd spent together, Thomas had took the red headed woman to be ruthless, efficient, and very organized.

Thomas had also noted that she was very attractive.

"And this is the exact moment...the opportunity that _they've_ been waiting for." Lucy pushed her chin out at the room that was filled to the hilt with People of Color.

Thomas shifted again. Lucy's words had found some potentially unfriendly ears a few rows back and had drawn attention from two female Peacekeepers standing near an exquisite painting gallery that housed renditions of several famous Black leaders: Martin Luther King Jr, the leader of the Civil Rights Movement; Malcom X, the rigid head of The House of Islam; Isaac Prince, the founder of a House in Chains; and President Adolphus Sweet, the first elected Black President in American History.

Thomas looked for clarification of her statement, since there wasn't a way safely out of this room. "Perhaps you might want to rephrase that?"

Lucy wasn't stupid. She caught his hint, flashed a careful smile highlighting her overbite, and inched close enough to kiss him.

"Perhaps that wasn't very...prudent of me, Thomas." Lucy said. "But I believe that you know that I am not a racist."

"I do." Thomas replied in all seriousness.

"Good. But being a foreigner, I possess objectivity and impartiality that you Americans lack."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm an outsider. I haven't been overly influenced by your country's culture or its history either way." Lucy said in a whisper. "The stain of slavery, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement have all pushed these people to an emotional brink. The House in Chains has capitalized and exploited this moment to their advantage."

Thomas frowned at her reasoning but did not interrupt.

"Look, I'm not saying that People of Color in this country haven't had to overcome obstacles; that would be shortsighted of me. But look around our planet, Thomas. Has their journey truly been so troubled? Have minorities in this land, especially in comparison to how smaller factions are treated by majorities in other countries, been treated any worse throughout history than anyone else?"

"Americans tend to look inwards at times like this."

"You are such arrogant bastards in that regard." She replied. "And that arrogance blinds you, darling. If you want to see real atrocities, in this past half century alone, look no further than in Kosovo, Rwanda, Burma, and Southern Sudan. These are true examples of a powerful majority exercising its power, its influence and its hatred of a minority and attempting to remove that minority from existence forever."

"I'm sure your people in South Africa would know nothing about this sort of thing would they?"

Lucy nodded two times, smiled tiredly, and nodded once again.

"You're right, of course, darling. Your keen observations never fail to astound me." She said, struggling to keep her voice level. "My point is that the minority in this county don't understand how good they have it here. Where People of Color in this land face bouts of discrimination, a right leaning justice system, and the occasional unlawful police shooting or beat down, people with similar skin color around the world are facing genocide and eradication."

"Understood," Thomas said. Does that mean that The Circle, the leaders of A House in Chains, shouldn't continue to better the lives of their people in this country?"

"I applaud A House in Chains efforts. I applaud their organization and their ruthlessness even more. They've grown to rival Hamas and The IRA in scope and influence. No one in the Western Hemisphere has _ever_ seen anything like the power structure they've built here." She lowered her voice further. "Perhaps they've grown _too_ powerful. As corny as it may sound, darling, the saying with great power, comes great responsibility, still applies even in this case. Since President Sweet's assassination Xavier Prince and his brood have done nothing short of proclaiming a Jihad against Pandora. The Circle is supposed to be a governing body, then they should damn well govern, and not foolishly challenge the neighborhood bully to fight they obviously can't win. A House in Chains, and People of Color everywhere, should be thankful that Pandora has chosen not to oblige them so far."

_I wish you were wrong, Lucy._ Thomas thought. _I wish you were wrong because Pandora may have_ obliged _them with the attack last night._ Thomas let out an exasperated exhale, felt suddenly tired and sat back as far as his chair allowed.

Lucy slapped her coat over his lap and began to discreetly squeeze his manhood, gently at first, then with more force as the minutes passed along.

" _Hey."_

Lucy leaned over and stuck her tongue in his ear. "So when can I can expect you to drop my hotel room?" She said between bouts of licking. Lucy's breath was a hot summer breeze. "I'm soon to be a divorced woman. I do deserve some measure of comforting don't I?"

Thomas was saved from her question and erotic bombardment when a spokesman stepped to the podium and asked a growing impatient crowd to settle down, that the press conference at long last was beginning. The platform was filling with known members of a House in Chains including two members of that principal governing party known as the Circle that Lucy had just mentioned. Grace Edwards, who was looking professional in a suit and stockings and Warren Washington, who wore his standard condescending smile on a handsome face, were standing atop the highest step. The next row was filled out by what Thomas could only surmise as The Board, a secondary political body which included Councilman Vanessa Davis, who was wearing one of her signature wigs, and at floor level stood a half dozen Peacekeepers and other friends and allies of a House in Chains. _What is all of this?_ And then the same spokesman introduced the primary speaker for the presser.

Thomas Pepper couldn't believe who he saw take the microphone.

Senator Terence Lavelle:

He was a bright skinned black man of 55 years old. He was above average height, below average weight, and looked as if he'd been born with a frog in throat and a permanent scowl on his otherwise good-looking face. "Good morning," He said with little enthusiasm. It reminded Thomas of the other man's demeanor when he lost the Democratic bid in the last presidential election. "I've been authorized by Mayor Johnson to speak on her behalf. Afterwards, I will allow a handful of questions only from our esteemed panel of journalist who were issued the numbers one through 15 and are seated in the first two rows in front of me."

Lavelle allowed the first round of information to sink in then he continued on. "First, I feel it is necessary to extend a moment of silence for the victims of last night's events."

The room fell silent.

"Thank you," Lavelle said in the instant afterwards. "As a member of The Board, I have been instructed to say, and I personally hold the belief, that Serena Tennyson and her illegally mandated organization of outlaws and hatemongers have moved against A House in Chains, People of Color, and specifically the citizens of Atlanta in the past 12 hours. A car bomb exploded last night at The Andrew Young Youth Center. 42 young men and women have been confirmed dead, although at least a half dozen more are as of this moment been unaccounted for. One of the first responders, a firefighter from the Fifth Precinct has also perished. His name is being withheld until his family can be notified of his bravery and sacrifice while performing his duty."

Thomas noted the number of casualties had risen twofold since Sheila had shut off the television with the remote and pulled the covers over both their naked bodies last night.

"Details are arriving in from The Siege at The Fox Theatre in pieces and fragments and unfortunately very little can be confirmed at this time." Lavelle was saying.

Thomas Pepper, Lucy Burgess, and apparently many other people were caught unaware that a significant event occurred blocks away from the youth center as well. Lavelle scowled and swallowed a drink of water until the loud and nervous chatter died down. He straightened the clip on his tie and pressed on. "And finally, as many of you have long suspected, and now with the heavy A House in Chains presence in this room can confirm, I will announce that Mayor Ernestine Johnson, like me, like most People of Color in the room, is a standing member of A House in Chains. In fact she is a dignified member of the Circle. She has the mark on her body, and more importantly our vision of our people's future in her heart."

Thomas noted that this time the conversations don't cease and desist. Thomas had long suspected that Mayor Johnson had ties to A House in Chains just as the senator said, but not only was she a member, but a card carrying associate of the governing body. _Wow._

Finally, Lavelle raised his hand for silence. "Please, everyone." He said. " _Please_. Let us move on." Lavelle's persistence and his booming voice won over the boisterous crowd at last. "We've invited you here, into Mayor Johnson's home, so that you would understand and acknowledge that the attack on Atlanta's mayor was the final leg of a well calculated three tier assaults that occurred last night."

"How exactly was the mayor attacked?" Jack Manning, lead columnist for the C _onstitution_ and seated in chair number three asked. Every eye in the building burned through Lavelle awaiting an answer of Manning's question. When Lavelle failed to respond right away Manning compelled him to explain his previous statement so that everyone would understand. Manning concluded by asking, "Was the mayor stabbed, Senator, was the mayor shot? What are her injuries? Where is she now?"

"Mayor Johnson is not suffering from any type of _traditional_ trauma or medical condition." Lavelle said quickly before a thousand theories and conversations could begin again.

Lucy brushed her breast against Thomas as she stood. "Senator please enlightens us. Please tell us what has specifically has happened to Mayor Johnson?"

Lavelle looked as if he wanted to be anywhere in the world but up on that podium. "Her doctors have every reason to believe that the mayor has been poisoned."

Once again, Senator Terrence Lavelle was not allowed to continue his monologue thanks to several dozen conversations breaking out simultaneously. Thomas could feel the anxiety building in the room. You could cut the tension with a knife. Lavelle tried, futilely this time, to talk over the mass. Grace Edwards smartly handed him a gavel and he banged it until silence once again ruled the chamber.

Thomas noted the facial expressions of many involved. Edwards looked as if she'd lost a sister. Washington couldn't hide a smirk. Councilman Davis' eyes looked...high underneath her new wig—

Lucy had shrouded their lower half's with her coat after she'd finished her question and sat back down in her chair. She squeezed his manhood again and again until it ached— until it felt just right. He stuck his own hand underneath the coat, found her hand and gave her a squeeze of his own. "Why don't we just hold hands?"

Lavelle was saying, "Mayor Johnson's primary doctor has provided us with two of his colleagues who will be able to answer your general questions while he attends to his patient."

The doctors, who Thomas had noted in the lab coats earlier, worked their way past the score of a House in Chains members. The taller of the two took the microphone and raised it four inches. _Well, at least Lucy is behaving for the moment._ In fact, Thomas noted that she let go of his hand, had produced a notepad and was using the Sharpie to take of notes as the doctor began to speak.

"Senator Lavelle is speaking the truth. Mayor Johnson has been poisoned. We've run dozens of tests over the past 10 hours and they all came back positive for foreign antibodies running rampant in the mayor's bloodstream."

"Is Mayor Johnson at risk of dying from this poison?" Richard Daily, a crime reporter from the local Fox affiliate asked.

The doctor glanced at his colleague, flashed the senator a hard gaze, and then said, "Yes. I would say that is highly probable, at least from what we know right now. I'll take another question or two."

Thomas decided by the time the doctor had finished, that he could have concluded his portion of the press conference after he answered the first question because he said little else of substance after that. He refused to answer what kind of poison the Mayor had contracted. He neglected to answer when or more importantly, _how_ this poison, whatever it was, was introduced into her system. And finally, to the chagrin of many in the room, the doctor declined to assure anyone if this poison was contagious or not.

Lucy Burgess and Thomas Pepper were gathering their belongings together by the East wall a short time later. The chamber was still a mountain of activity although some of the energy had leaked out with the combination of the sobering news and only a third of the habitants from the press conference still mulling about. Lucy took advantage of sparse crowd and brushed a breast against Thomas' arm.

"I'll be waiting on you with bells on, darling." She handed Thomas a standard hotel issued key card. "Yes, bells, and nothing else I might add,"

Thomas dropped the card into his pants pocket without looking at it. "Is sex all you think about, Lucy? A half hour ago, you pointed out to me that my city...my country is headed for a crisis on a social front for which it may not recover. People are already dead and dying as we speak."

"Not us, darling," Lucy said and gave the whole of him a look over. Her breathing intensified. "I plan to live forever, and so do you. You and I are one and the same and more alike than you would care to admit. We are two birds of the same feather. Only I have a cunt and you have a cock."

"Maybe—"

"Thomas Pepper," Senator Lavelle had approached the two of them undetected with two of the Peacekeepers shadowing his footsteps. Thomas wondered how much of his conversation with Lucy had the other man heard.

"Good morning, Senator." Thomas smoothed out his jacket and then offered Lavelle his hand."

"Mayor Johnson has asked to speak with you personally," Senator Lavelle said after the two men shook hands. "That is," He gave Lucy a purposeful but short gander. "I hope you can spare time out of your schedule."

"Of course, Senator," Thomas Pepper buttoned his jacket up. "I'm ready when you are, sir."

Lucy threw her jacket over her left arm and proceeded to follow the two larger men. A Peacekeeper with deadpan eyes silently stepped into her path.

Senator Lavelle flashed a taut smile. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Burgess. It is still _Mrs._ Burgess isn't it?"

"It is."

"This is a private meeting. You may stay here in the conference room as long as you like. In fact, there are refreshments down the hall if you find yourself thirsty."

"I told you that I'm always busy." Thomas said to her and raised the key card up out of his pocket to give her the chance to take it back from his possession.

Lucy snatched it from his grip, opened his pocket once more, and dropped the key card back from where it came. "This is not about work and you damn well know it, darling," Lucy called out to him as Thomas turned his back on her and met the other men's strides as they walked towards Mayor Johnson's private quarters somewhere in this maze of a mansion. "You aren't interested in me anymore because you are attracted to wedding rings, and not to the women who wear them." She made her words bite even as he must have disappeared from her view. "It's wrong. You are immoral. I'm immoral. It's what turned you on about me."

When the four of them reached Mayor Johnson's private residence ten minutes later Thomas wished he had stayed behind with Lucy.

The room stank of death.

The staff had tried valiantly to cover the smell with disinfectants, air fresheners and scented candles but nothing had worked. Whatever this poison was, whatever infections the mayor was suffering through, almost had seemed to take a life of its own.

The only thing Thomas could compare the stench to be how his father's room had smelled during his final days of life when Thomas was a freshman in college. So when Lavelle had excused the Peacekeepers and Thomas saw Mayor Ernestine Johnson lying in a transportable hospital bed in the corner of this room, he morphed into that younger man, if only for a few seconds, the past he'd thought he'd left behind so many years ago. Thomas wanted to believe that the tears stinging the corners of his eyes, and the reason he openly covered his mouth with his shirt, were because of the pungent smells attacking him at his core, and not some makeshift memory of his dead father.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice, Thomas." Mayor Johnson said. She used her index finger to beckon him nearer. "Come closer, Thomas. I don't want to have to talk over all the beeps and whistles of all this medical equipment."

Thomas attempted to lift his size 12's, but his feet were lodged to the floor as if they were in quicksand. And for the first time he recalled how people in the room downstairs reacted when the doctor who spoke at the press conference declined to assure anyone if this poison was contagious or not.

Mayor Ernestine Johnson:

She had been a chestnut colored black woman who spoke with a deep, mannish voice, but had been blessed with the curves of a woman half her age. He could see her shape clearly, even silhouetted underneath the bed sheets.

And yet the poison had stolen most of her good looks from her now. She wore purple boils and blisters on her face and neck, and blemishes of bruised blood and scars existed in the areas that the boils and blisters did not.

"Close enough," She called out to him. Consciously, he never remembered getting his feet moving and walking towards the bed. Senator Lavelle had disappeared without a trace, surely attempting to escape this smell. The two Peacekeepers had joined two others by an open window and were following events transpiring by the mayor's bed with a vested interest. Thomas noted something else for the first time: The Peacekeeper's were armed.

"Doctor Cavetti, my personal physician, tells me this unpleasant odor is the result of a chemical reaction between my pain medication and the poison. I apologize." She said.

"Save your apologies, Mayor. None of this can be blamed on you." Thomas curiosity won over his disgust. With concentration, he inhaled and exhaled deeply, and smoothed out his edges of his coat out of habit. _This woman may not have much longer to live. Pull yourself together, son._ It was his father's voice, calm and strong and _alive_. "How may I be of service?"

Just then, Mayor Johnson suffered through a coughing spell that doubled her over. The one lab coat in the room, the man Thomas assumed to be Doctor Cavetti, sprinted over to the mayor's bedside with her husband a footstep behind him. The mayor's coughing episode passed as quickly as it came, and everything considered, she looked no worse for it.

Mayor Ernestine Johnson announced to Thomas that her doctor had been enjoying a semi- retirement and was only seeing a few choice patients a week when she called him up last night. He was a walking beanstalk of a man with a banana for a nose and a catcher's glove for hands. He was methodically reading her vitals, comparing them with the data on her charts, and then checked his watch.

The doctor said, "Promise me that you two will keep this conversation short."

"Scout's honor," Mayor Johnson raised her right hand for effect and managed a grin. Thomas admired the woman's courage and her good humor.

Cavetti gave Thomas a long hard look, flashed Antonio Johnson, the Mayor's husband, a sympathetic gaze, before finally trailing off to his work he was previously performing on the far side of the room. Some thought stopped him in his tracks, and glanced at the mayor of one of his bony shoulders.

"I've been your doctor the better part of your whole life, Ernestine. You never _were_ a girl scout." He said and grinned in spite of himself. Mayor Johnson barked out of laugh. Thomas smiled genuinely.

Mayor Johnson's husband did not smile or laugh.

Antonio Johnson:

He had big, pouty lips, razor bumps covered his lower cheek and jaw, and he wore gold rimmed glasses that looked almost fluorescent against his dark skin, and didn't fit as he continually pushed them up off of his nose.

He planted himself in the space between Thomas Pepper and his sick wife protectively as if he were a Doberman, with his fur ruffled, ready to spring into attack mode at any given moment. "I will not cry." He announced to Thomas Pepper out of nowhere. "I will not cry."

"Never mind my husband." Mayor Johnson said. She massaged the skin around her husband's knuckles, smoothing out a fist that the other man had made. "It's alright, sweetheart, I'll be fine. Give me a moment with Mr. Pepper. We have much business to discuss and we don't have a lot of time."

The mayor's husband stiffly began to back away to an area of seclusion on the opposite side of where Cavetti was standing. It was far enough away for his wife to conduct her business, but close enough for him to rush to her immediate aid if she had another attack or came under one.

"Circumstances in our world present unique opportunities, don't they, Thomas?"

"I'm sorry, Mayor. I don't think I catch your meaning."

"It is amazing the bond that is forged between the dying and those who will be left behind when that fateful moment is at our doorstep." She'd watched her husband without interruption when he finally took his place of solace. Mayor Johnson turned her attention towards Thomas and he noticed that her bruised face had taken on a harder edge to it. "Make no mistake, Thomas. I watched Senator Lavelle's press conference. I saw when Cavetti's aids refused to announce to the world what the truth is: I am dying."

"Do you have any idea how this happened, Mayor?"

A spasm of pain hit her, lifted her torso slightly off of her bed, but she masked it well and neither her husband nor her doctor noticed.

"I wish I knew. I am confident that if there is an answer, Doctor Cavetti will find it. I'll leave to details and the medical diagnosis to him. I'm more interested in the questions that _you_ have for me, the ones that you truly want to know."

Thomas studied her face for a minute. His legs had grown weary so he pointed at a nearby chair. "May we continue this conversation after I sit down?"

"Sure."

The chair was far more comfortable than the ones the press had been assigned to downstairs. He sat on the chair's edge to keep himself alert and the conversation formal as it should be. He'd taken in other observations, the journalist seeping out of him, after he'd finally gotten over the room's unpleasant odor and Mayor Johnson's scars: He was the only white face in the room besides Dr. Cavetti. It had been a long time since he'd felt so isolated. But as he watched Antonio Johnson continuing to birddog him he felt just that, isolated and... _vulnerable,_ and with a fresh bout of fear topping his feelings off.

Mayor Johnson must have felt his budding anxiety so she blew her husband a kiss which seemed to soften Antonio's hard gaze, if only for a few minutes.

"We had a son together."

"I knew of him." Thomas said. "Wasn't he around 19 years old when he died in the Middle East during the first Persian War during Operation Desert Storm?"

"Desert Shield, actually." She said in a quiet voice. She was still maintaining eye contact with her husband. A small, subtle coughing spell rose up out her chest but she waved off any assistance from anyone including Thomas who had jumped to his feet faster that he'd thought was possible.

"Oh how I loved my Sean," She said as if she had never been forced to stop talking only a minute earlier. "I can still remember how he looked the day he left for boot camp, as if I saw him passing through this room only an hour ago."

Thomas heard a story stirring inside the mayor's mouth. So he sat back, crossed one leg over the other and prepared himself to listen. He owed the dying that much. Perhaps, Thomas hoped that many years from now, someone who listen to one of his tales when he was an old, dying man.

"Tell me about him."

"He was taller than Antonio is now, and may God bless my husband's heart, a lot more handsome than his father. But his good looks alone are not what made me so proud of him." She said. "Sean was so smart, Thomas. He had an intense fascination for learning and love of books and reading."

"You must have been very proud of him."

"One of us was." Although Mayor Johnson never allowed her thick lips to waver, yet her smile lost all of its warmth. "My husband began to wonder if Sean's love of words, art, theatre, and music were somehow _unnatural_. Up into the day Sean left us for boot camp, I had never seen him show interest in a woman, not once. It never dawned on me to ask Sean about that part of his life."

"Your husband's own manliness came into question then. What kind of father— what kind of _man_ raises a gay child? Those are the type of questions the father of gay boys asks themselves. What happened then, Mayor? Did he threaten Sean in some way?"

She nodded. "He offered Sean the chance to man himself up, as he put it, by joining the army. In exchange our son would be allowed to have the hefty college fund we'd saved for him. If our son showed some _natural_ interest he would be allowed to indulge in all of his other activities upon his return to the states."

"And this _thing_ went on between your husband and your son without your knowledge or consent."

"I was running for reelection of a lower seat of power earlier in my career."

"And Sean took you husband's offer, and opted for military service."

She nodded again, as tears began to litter her face. "And he never even got to prove his worth in battle. He was killed when he was blindsided by a Humvee while he was unloading a supply truck in Kuwait."

Thomas lowered his head. "Even after all these years, the memory of how this all came about must be devastating for you."

"If only I had these years you speak of, Thomas," She said. "My beloved husband told me this tale this _morning_ , after my conditioned worsened from the effects of the poising. My husband told me that he felt responsible for Sean's death. As if he had killed my son himself. And then he asked for my forgiveness. "

"I will not cry," Antonio Johnson said aloud as if he'd heard the mayor's conversation with the reporter. "I will not cry."

Thomas got to his feet as if sitting any longer would drive him insane. He allowed the mayor a respectful moment of silence then he said, "I'm sorry, Mayor, for everything that has happened to you. And yet, you called for me. I'm not sure if I understand the reason why. What is it that I can do for you, Mayor Johnson?"

A third coughing spell, and by far the most intense one to date, came on her suddenly. Mayor Johnson's torso convulsed once and again and Thomas guessed that she was having a seizure of some strength and magnitude. The medical equipment beeped and whistled loudly, Cavetti ran to her side, and Antonio unleashed a wail that sounded anything but human.

" _Alright, I've had enough of this, Ernestine_." Cavetti spat out angrily. "This stops now. I'm terminating this visit." He pulled her eye lid open and shined a light in there. "Ernestine, can you hear me?"

After what seemed a long time she finally responded with a nod. Thomas thought when her body relaxed with the suddenness that it had bent in horrible pain that the Mayor of Atlanta had died.

Instead, he watched her grab the doctor's wrist and forearm with a devastating vice like grip. "I must finish this, Doctor. Promise me you'll let me _finish this_."

Cavetti looked from Mayor Johnson, to her husband, to the Peacekeepers who were at full attention, to Thomas Pepper, then to Heaven up above for guidance.

"Alright, Ernestine, damn you, make this quick."

When Mayor Ernestine Johnson turned to Thomas, her facial features had worsened as several of the purple boils and blisters had burst, leaving pus and blood leaking around her cheeks and jaws and onto her bed.

"You are not moral man." Mayor Johnson's mannish tone had grown darker still; if it were because of her condition or if she were angry, Thomas could not say.

And yet he had enough of women telling him how immoral he was today, thank you. "You asked for _my_ help, Mayor." He said, sharper than he had intended.

"The most immoral of men are often the most honest. They have a clear understanding of who they are. They know what they want, and they prepare to sacrifice whatever they feel is necessary, even their very souls, to get what they want."

"I haven't sacrificed anything, Mayor. Maybe you're mistaken. Maybe it was a mistake for you to ask me here—"

"We are all in the path of darker days, Thomas. And although it hasn't rained in Atlanta in over a year, the storm clouds are upon us. I can smell them. I can _feel_ them."

"Are you talking about the Whirlwind?"

"Yes," She said. "The Whirlwind may be upon us all." Mayor Johnson found her indoor voice where she left it minutes before. "And if an immoral man must be our beacon of light before the approaching storm then so be it. You are the truth teller. You are our beacon of light."

"I don't understand."

"Yes, you do, Thomas. You've taught me, you've taught all of us in your books and on your blogs. I want you to think Thomas. I want you to truly understand what I need from you."

"Where Thomas Pepper went, the truth was never far behind." He said. An old lover had christened him with the stupid phrase after he promised her that would give her an intense orgasm during their lovemaking...and hence, had given his pet phrase that would become his calling card that he now always signed off on his blogs with.

Mayor Johnson was struggling for breath. "Truth..."

"You want the truth about who poisoned you."

She shook her head. He still wasn't getting it. "All of this is much bigger than just about me. I knew that there were inherent risks when I took the mark, when I became of member of the Circle, the governing body of A House in Chains."

And for the first time Thomas noticed the he saw a tattoo of a chain on the lowest part of her neck. She was wearing the mark. Thomas thought long and hard before he spoke again.

"There are three questions that every Person of Color in this country wants to know." He said with renewed confidence and sense of purpose.

"What are they, Thomas?"

"Who killed President Adolphus Sweet?" Four years after the president's murder, and the second largest investigation in American History behind the 911 attacks, still had brought no one to justice for firing the shot that killed the first Black president.

Mayor Johnson nodded.

After another minute Thomas said, "Who is the Caretaker?" No one knew if the first leader of Pandora had gone into seclusion years earlier or was dead. He was said to be a man beyond feeling or remorse.

Mayor Johnson nodded once again.

Finally, Thomas Pepper said, "And what is the Whirlwind?" Rumor said that the Caretaker had birthed an ingenious, diabolical plan to destroy People of Color before he went into hiding or before he died. Many Americans, including Thomas Pepper believed Serena Tennyson knew what this plan was.

Mayor Johnson nodded one final time, but instead of relaxing her body, she pressed all of her weight on her knuckles and gazed long and hard at Thomas, ignoring everyone else in the room including both her doctor and her husband who were pleading with her to stop this now.

"All that I ask from you, Thomas Pepper, is for the _truth_ , nothing more." After she mouthed her last statement, Mayor Johnson lay flat on her back at last. Thomas stood still, unable to move as he had when he first was asked by the mayor to approach her bed. She surprised him by adding, "If you help me, you will gain enemies on both sides of this conflict. They both will harass you. They will threaten you. They may even kill you. Yes, Thomas, they may try and _kill_ you."

"I understand." And he hoped he truly did understand what he was signing up for. "You have my word, Mayor that I will find the answers to your three questions, or die trying."

She smiled one final time. And Thomas Pepper knew it was that pictorial of her that he would someday take to his own grave.

Mayor Ernestine Johnson's was engulfed in a final spasm that yanked, twisted—and ultimately broke her body and her spirit and she died a very a loud, a very violent death.

Doctor Gregory Cavetti cursed loud enough to alert security.

Antonio Johnson was proven to be a liar after all, for he finally did cry.

And Thomas Pepper exited the room a shaken man, but a man with a mission and a promise to keep nonetheless.

Where ever Thomas Pepper went, he hoped the truth was never far behind.
Chapter Two

A dysfunctional family is still a family nonetheless.

-Saul Pepper tells his son Thomas over dinner in 1972.
Angel

**Blanche Coffee House; Griffin, Georgia. 2** nd **Day**

Outside the Blanche Coffee and Pancake House in Griffin, Georgia, two FBI agents were securing the buildings perimeter, pretending to be a vacationing couple holding hands, while out on an early morning stroll. 50 feet closer, a third agent lit a cigarette and leaned back against a light pole. Inside the restaurant, a fourth agent scooped the last morning newspaper out of the machine and secured it under his arm pit.

Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree knew that the Blanche Coffee and Pancake House had survived a fire that gutted its infrastructure in the late 1960's, a change of ownership 1982 when the founder died of Lupus, numerous recessions, and the Great Recession of the last few years. _But will it survive a federal incursion this morning?_

She watched a fifth agent enter the premises, order breakfast at the register, and angle towards where she sat alone. It was far too early in the morning to play hide and seek with the feds, even one as good looking as this one, so she crossed one pants leg over the other and waited for him to approach her booth. She also knew that it was also far too early for most human beings to pour gin into their coffee so she doubled the content in her cup to improve her odds of getting it right.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree:

She was a curvy brunette in her mid-thirties. She had heavily arched brows curved above her big brown eyes. She wore rose colored lipstick over exaggerated thick lips and walked with a limp that grew more pronounced as she stressed or tired. Angel's enhanced lips were a gift from a former lover who had had bottomless pockets and an erotic imagination. The limp was the result of brief but wicked bout of polio when she was ten. She wore a pungent fragrance of perfume to douse the smell of alcohol rising up out of her pores.

"Dr. Hick-Dupree, my name is Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan of The Federal Bureau of Investigation." He said, as way of greeting her. "Would you mind if I share this booth with you?"

Angel flashed him a wicked, playful smile.

Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan:

He was of medium height and weight, tanned to a tone that Angel wondered where his previous assignment had been, clean shaven, and had grayed early in life and now wore the snowcapped hairdo like it was a badge of honor. He wasn't wearing a wedding ban. Angel kept the wickedly playful smile on her thick lips for a bit longer than she usually would, the one she reserved for attractive men she could sleep with, but probably would not.

"It's your ass." _And a fine one,_ she did not add. And just as Sheridan's backside hit the chair she did say, "Champion didn't tell me where he was going."

"Excuse me?"

Angel drank from her coffee cup for a taste of her gin laced liquid courage. "You and your people have been out searching for Joseph Champion. Whatever lead you may have had has led you here."

Sheridan exhaled and arched a bushy brow in curiosity. "What gave us away?"

"You people are always so busy. I'm sure you don't have enough time for me to explain."

He glanced at his watch. "Damn. You are probably right, but I'm curious anyway."

Angel explained the agent's faulty positioning before the waitress arrived at the booth with Sheridan's cup of coffee, with packs of cream and sugar in a saucer. She automatically started to refill Angel's cup but the doctor shook her head and thanked her all the same.

"So are you going to explain to me what your involvement with a federal fugitive might be, Doctor? Joseph Champion is a person of interest in the shooting of President Adolphus Sweet. He is the most wanted man in the world. "

"Alright, Nicholas, where do I begin?" She asked, and stole another sip of her drink. "Joseph has made overtures about turning himself over to your people. He told me that he is prepared to produce prudent and specific information on Serena Tennyson's strategies and Pandora movements."

"Champion's made these so called overtures before." Sheridan said with a trail of bitterness in his voice.

"He wants to turn himself in. He told me that."

"Which brings me to my next question, Doctor?" Sheridan said. "Why did he come here? Forgive me, but you are living here in the middle of nowhere in South Central Georgia."

"Joseph and I share ties, Nicholas. Check your records. We were both recruited and became card carrying members of Pandora. It didn't take long for me to realize what madness Serena is capable of. I resigned after only a few months. Joseph Champion wasn't as bright."

Sheridan smiled. She recognized the gesture for what it was: She'd saved him some time and energy for having to extract that information, that he should have already had filed on from her.

"Okay, then back to my original line of questioning, Doctor, If Joseph Champion really wants to do the right thing and turn himself in to the authorities, then why won't he?"

"He doesn't think you can protect him."

The waitress had returned with Sheridan's breakfast of bacon and eggs cooked over easy. Sheridan excused himself and took three bites of the eggs, and a single bite of the crispy bacon, wiped his mouth, and urged Angel to go on.

"There honestly isn't much to tell, Nicholas," She said. "He called me on my cell at my practice and informed me that he was in town to see a local man, another former Pandora agent who was running from Serena as well. After I arrived at the hotel we argued about him turning himself in. He was emotional. We drank a lot. We had sex. It went back and forth like that for a while. I don't remember a lot of specific details other than our sexual chemistry haven't eroded since our last encounter."

Sheridan struggled to keep a straight face. "Did this man, who Champion mentioned, ever show? Did you even overhear a phone call he may have made?"

"No. Sorry. Joseph never even gave me his name or what his function was in Pandora's organization. I could tell that they had important business though. Like I said, Nicholas, other than what I've told you, last night is a blur on my radar."

"That's too bad."

"Is it? He can't have gone too far. I'm sure with all of your resources and influence you will track him down sooner or later. In the meanwhile, you are stuck with little old me?" Angel spread her arms over her head for effect, the gin working its old magic in her bloodstream.

"Yes, Doctor, little old you, a former Pandora recruit who happens to be the _real_ reason that we ventured down to this shithole in the first place." Sheridan said to her surprise. When she cocked her own curious brow he added, "On two different occasions this agency had retained your services in a consulting capacity, the results have been...productive on each case. You are very good in your field of expertise."

"Thank you," Angel said seriously. "My work in Clinical Psychology means everything to me. The Deputy Director seems to respect my opinions."

"He does. He speaks fondly of you, almost if he has a very soft spot for you in his heart."

_It's probably a hard one and it hangs around a little further South than his heart._ "Listen, Nicholas, you say that you and these other agents came down here looking for me?"

"We did."

"Then this must all be about that phone call I had with Louis Keaton around ten days ago now. Again, during that little season of madness that I spent as an operative in Pandora, Louis was a patient of mine. I'm sure you already know this as well."

"I am aware of your relationship with Keaton, Doctor." It was time for Sheridan to flash his own mischievous grin at her. Angel surmised that mischievous looked good on this federal agent. "And your phone records indicate it's been 11 days since you last spoke to Keaton, actually. But forgive me, I'm interrupting."

Angel sat her cup in a saucer and read the statue that Sheridan had produced from The Justice Department reminding her of federal regulations to allow wiretapping of phone lines to prevent terrorism in by foreign and domestic means. The waitress returned and filled Sheridan's cup once more. He paid his bill with a government credit card and tipped her with a ten dollar bill to finalize her dismissal.

"Louis Keaton was a troubled man." Angel heard herself say.

"He is _still_ a troubled man." Sheridan unlatched his briefcase, produced a laptop, which he has up and booted with the care and precision of a man who has more than a familiarity with contemporary technology. "I want to get your opinion of what you see here."

Sheridan's computer was equipped with a split screen. The video feed on the left side is from one of the big networks documenting the bombing of The Andrew Young Center upstate in Atlanta with the usual coverage angles. The one on the right side, while not as nearly a clean feed, is far more interesting, and catches Angel's attention. This feed is from a surveillance camera perched on the side of an adjacent building. It is time stamped. Angel recognizes the figure of an undersized older man who was wearing a denim jacket, flannel shirt and faded jeans and ankle length cowboy boots. _Louis Keaton._

"Oh my, God," Angel ignored her coffee cup and nearly reached for her gin stash itself almost out of habit, but thought the better of that decision. "I haven't watched the news this morning. How many more casualties were added to the list during the night?"

"I didn't get an update. And I don't like to speculate specifics on such things, though I suspect the number will grow over the coming days."

"I'm sure it will," She settled for a subtle sip out of her cup. She watched the time stamped footage once again with it showing Louis holding something in his hand, then the youth center exploding into a ball of fire. "I am not going to argue with you about what that camera implies, Nicholas."

"That footage doesn't _imply_ anything." Angel heard Sheridan's voice take on a stern tone. "Keaton's there on scene. He is a known operative of Pandora. They have formerly taken responsibility and credit earlier this morning for the terrorist act known as 411."

"Give me some latitude here. We both believe Keaton to be a troubled man. But he is a man known to be a pedophile, a man who has repeatedly molested children, especially young boys." Angel said. "Blowing up buildings has not been his MO. That is not who this man is."

Sheridan eyed Angel a second or two after his cell phone rang. He begged the doctor's pardon and began to listen to the party on the other end, an agent named Green. He makes a sudden decision that she should be in on the conversation and he puts the speaker on and lays the cell, face up, on table.

"...We've been monitoring your conversation, sir, and there is no sign of Champion." Agent Green was saying. "I have received intel that a dead body had been discovered four blocks from your present location. He is a white male who was either in his late 40's, or early 50's. There was no ID on him."

"Is there an immediate cause of death?" Angel asked Sheridan, as she was familiar with FBI procedures in the time she'd spent working with the agency.

"Agent Green," Sheridan said. "Answer the doctor's question."

"Yes, sir," Green grunted, sounding unsure of whether this violated protocol or not. "He suffered a gunshot wound to his forehead at close range. It was a small caliber weapon. The body is still warm so the evidence points that it occurred in the past six to 12 hours. It will take three to four hours before we get the ballistics back from the lab."

"Expect those reports back in no more than two hours. Walker's crew is known to pull miracles off from time to time, especially with proper stimuli to motivate them. I will have The Deputy Director to give them a call as soon as I'm finished here." Sheridan powered down his laptop. "Agent Green, does any evidence support a theory that this gunshot was self-inflicted."

"Unlikely. There is an absence of residue on his fingers and his wrist. You've trained us not to speculate—"

"I have at that, Agent Green. Let's make an exception this one time, go ahead"

Agent Green said, "I think it was a robbery. As I already told you he has no Id or wallet at all. His pants pockets were turned inside out. And a couple of his fingers are discolored as if there were rings there once. I believe the perpetrator lifted the jewelry off him before he got out of dodge." The man concluded by saying, "I would advise Agent Walker to report her findings to the local police department."

"I disagree, Lance. We will stay on top of this ourselves and examine it closer."

"Yes, sir," Angel could hear the younger man groan in the backdrop before the line was severed.

Agent Sheridan drained the last of his coffee. "As I said, Doctor, we came looking for you."

"Why? I don't see where I can help you."

"I need you in Atlanta. I need you aiding in the 411 investigation."

"What could I offer you in an investigation like this?" She wiped sweat from her brow, grabbed her gin stash out of her purse for Sheridan to see, and stood to leave. "And as you can see, Nicholas, I'm in no condition to help you if I desired to. Anyway, you have good people in there, in Atlanta already. Christopher Prince is personal friend of mine. He runs the field office, and most importantly is one hell of a Special Agent..."

Sheridan breaks eye contact for the first time in the past few minutes. He pushes his coffee cup away from him in disgust.

Angel abruptly sits down and flops back in her seat.

"Something has happened to Christopher hasn't it? Sheridan compounds her concerns when he fails to reply immediately. "Where is Agent Prince?"

"No one has seen or heard from Agent Prince since yesterday morning."

"He's notorious for not answering his cell."

Sheridan nodded in agreement. "He is notorious for not answering his _private_ cell phone. Agent Prince's partner told her superiors that Prince had an appointment with his private doctor for a follow up from an annual examination. He never showed. Agent Tabitha Blue hasn't been able to raise him on his company line. Agent Prince never misses a call on this line. No matter what time of day he receives a call he always answers this phone."

Angel searched the ceiling of the restaurant and then the floor for answers. _Where could Christopher be?_

Sheridan: "There is more."

Angel exhaled. "There always is."

"The 411 attacks were not centered on the bombing of The Andrew Young Center alone. Atlanta's Mayor, Ernestine Johnson has died of complications stemming from some type of poisoning. And currently, there is a siege still underway at The Fox Theatre in Midtown Atlanta." Sheridan hesitated for a long time, and Angel's dread grew. "Agent Blue told her superiors that Agent Prince mentioned that he had purchased a ticket to the show the night Pandora's siege began. He had a date. I believe he is there and is amongst the hundreds of hostages that are being held inside."

Angel felt her teeth chatter. She suffered through a spell of nausea that fortunately passed as quickly as it came.

She stood again.

"I'll need to run home. I'm going to grab a hot shower and grab some personal belongings." Angel looked down at him squarely in his eye. "And I'll need some time to sober up."

Agent Sheridan stood up next to her. "I've anticipated your assistance and have a car waiting outside for you to handle any private business you may have."

"I'm in," Angel muttered more to herself than to the man standing next to her. "I'm all in."

"Be careful what you are volunteering for." Sheridan rubbed the back of his snow white head. "I'm under orders, by Deputy Director Rice, to solicit your services. I follow orders, Doctor Hicks-Dupree. Still, I want you to know that I didn't ask for you. And my boss has left it to my discretion how long you assist on this case."

Angel nodded soberly. "I understand, Nicholas."

Agent Sheridan brushed off his suit and straightened his tie. "No, Doctor, I highly doubt that you. Let me explain myself further. What others in my field of work call taking initiative I call being insubordinate. What another man in my position may proclaim someone as being a free spirit, I would name that same person reckless." He leaned over her. "You are reckless, Doctor. You're past ties to Pandora, the way you lead your personal life, everything that encompasses _you_ presents a clear and present danger to the honorable men and women who still serve their country through this bureau. I will not tolerate any screw-ups from you."

Sheridan reached down into her purse and scooped the tin flask of gin out of it. "I hope that I have made myself perfectly clear on my expectations of you during your consultation."

"Crystal clear, Nicholas."

"And from this point moving forward you will address me as Agent Sheridan or Sheridan."

"Yes, _Agent_ Sheridan."

She had lived a reckless life. And Sheridan was right, for both personal and professional reasons; her presence during this investigation was a clear and present danger to all involved including Christopher Prince, assuming he still lived.

But as long as Angel Hicks-Dupree loved, her redemption was possibly still at hand.

She was alive.

As she turned towards the exit of the restaurant she gathered that one of Sheridan's agents hadn't gotten the message that she had joined their ranks, or that Joseph Champion was nowhere to be found in this vicinity.

"Agent Sheridan, I pointed all of your people out. Why is one of your men still sneaking around outside?"

Agent Sheridan straightened out his tie again and looked as if something on the floor had gained his attention. "He's not one of my men, Doctor, he's one of _yours."_

Angel glanced in the stranger's direction and then took a second, longer look at the man who was standing outside the restaurant. She sighed in disbelief to the fact that what Sheridan said was true.

Doctor Seth Dupree was peeking through an open blind of the Blanche Coffee and Pancake House.

As long as Angel lived, her redemption was possibly still at hand.

She was alive.

She was alive and she had an angry husband to face.
Seth

**The Dupree's private family residence, East Griffin, Georgia, 2** nd **Day**

"We're not done talking yet," Seth watched his wife drop to her knees and reach along the side of the bed for her travel bag she'd always kept packed and ready to go on a moment's notice. "And _now_ where do you think you're going?"

Angel looked back at him, sighed, and rolled her big brown eyes at him. "Atlanta. I'm needed in Atlanta, Seth."

Seth pointed at the carpet. "You're needed here. We've got to fix whatever is wrong with our marriage."

Angel, impervious, went back to the business of what she was doing as if a word hadn't been exchanged between them. She got to her feet, switched on the widescreen with the remote and pumped up the volume past 40. The sound faintly echoed as their bedroom and seemingly every other room this Victorian styled house. It was too spacious for two of them and even with the expensive furniture loitering throughout, looked as if no one lived there.

_There have been too many_ big _fights that have taken place under this roof as well, Angel, too many tears shed._ Tonight, if only for one night, he promised those tears would not come from him.

Dr. Seth Dupree:

He was six feet tall and still fit even now that he was in his early forties. Friends had started calling him The Gray Man about ten years ago. He had sparkling gray eyes and had more streaks of gray in his hair and whiskers than he liked. He had always possessed the unique ability to look comfortable and relaxed, yet professional, whether the day dictated him wearing a three piece suit or a golf shirt and slacks.

He wasn't looking comfortable or relaxed right now.

"Make me understand what any of what has gone down in Atlanta has to do with—"

" _Quiet_." Angel planted her long, manicured fingernail close enough to his full to his thin lip to touch. "I want to hear this."

A razor thin blonde stood as close to the barricades of a building as the authorities had allowed. Seth scanned the area immediately behind her, an electronic sign noted the structure as The Historic Fox Theatre. _Historic. It just plain looks old,_ Seth thought. Some of the roof's paneling had torn from the hinges and looked if it would completely off if a strong gust of wind whipped in right now. _Well, knowing how the city's luck rolls these days, a wild wind event would be the only type of storm they would get._ Seth reasoned to himself. Atlanta and most of northern Georgia was suffering through what some meteorologist experts were calling the Drought of the Century. There hadn't been significant rainfall in metro Atlanta in nearly a year. And wildfires had begun running rampant on the outskirts of town, especially to the North and West of downtown. Some days the city looked more like LA encompassed in thick soup bowl of smoke, instead of the smog America's second largest city suffered through.

Sections of panels and tile were torn from the right side of the building as the camera scanned the protestors who'd begin camping out of there. Seth rubbed at his day old beard, and shook his head at his own stupidity. _Of course there are torn panels and patches of damage in those spots,_ he thought, _how could I have forgotten about the tremor the region suffered about two weeks ago._ Seismologist had measured the quake at 3.3 and the center of it near Columbia, South Carolina, the Atlantic fault shifting again after lying nearly dormant for half a century.

And now Atlanta was suffering through this latest challenge.

Heavily armed police units, equipped with high powered rifles struggled to keep citizens behind the barriers. Seth's gray eyes took notice of a group of half dozen young men and women of color who chanted the same theme over and again, especially when the television cameras focused on them. One of them would ask, _Brothers and sisters, what do you see when visualize our people's future?_ And the others would answer in chorus, _we see days filled with misery and pain._ Most of the protestors were ordinary, everyday Joes, but the camera seemed to highlight the presence of clans of young men dressed in Khaki suit and sneakers. _The Peacekeepers;_ the media is focusing on them to stir the pot...and yet he endured a chill strong enough to burn at his shoulder blades, _or are these vigilante numbers higher than anyone assumes they are._

Seth rushed to widescreen, located where the power button was, and slammed the set off.

Angel swore at him.

"You got in an unmarked car back at that restaurant with federal agents didn't you, Angel. This," He pointed his thumb back at the blank television screen. "This is about Christopher Prince isn't it?"

Angel had folded her arms, which tugged at her blouse, exposing a little cleavage. Knowing his wife as he did, Seth was sure the act was intentional, to throw his concentration off. "The FBI believes that Christopher is one of the hostages being held in that theatre. Agents of Pandora are holding them there. Everyone inside that place is in danger. Sheridan got on a plane when we left; he is putting his hostage negotiating team together, right now, as we speak. You know I've consulted with the feds before, Seth, you know I've worked directly with hostage negotiators. That car, as you spoke of, is outside waiting on me right now.

"This isn't about those hostages, for you, Angel," He heard his voice rise, thought about the FBI agents planted 50 feet or so from where he was standing, made him instantly regret doing so. "This is about Christopher Prince. You've always loved him."

"Oh stop being so melodramatic, Seth." Angel had opened her travel bag, replaced a short sleeved blouse with a longer sleeved one to protect her from the night's chill up there. "Just stop it already. You know our story, our history together. Our fathers were cops, partners for ten years. That partnership of theirs evolved into a lifelong friendship, where such relationships between black men and white men were rare and were frowned upon in the Deep South. Chris and I played together as children. My father even trusted him enough to babysit me. In time their partnership ended when my father moved on to the US Marshalls and then eventually to the ATF. And although their friendship fractured somewhat when Isaac Prince founded a House in Chains, their children still kept in touch.

She stopped with her activates for a minute and Seth watched her big browns mist up. "He's my best friend in this world. Of course, I care about what happens to him."

Seth inhaled, exhaled, and stood as tall as his 6"1 frame allowed. "I understand that, Angel. He is your best friend. _I_ am your husband."

Angel's eyes lost the mist. "And for that, I pity you."

"That's not funny."

Angel tossed a bra into her bag and stepped in his direction. He thought she would embrace him, but she stopped just short of where he was standing, and brushed the back of his cheek with her soft hands. He felt aroused in spite of himself. He wanted to be angry right now. "You're a good man, Seth Dupree. You're a damn good husband. You deserve a damn good wife. I'm not a good wife. I'm not...she struggled to find the right word...I'm not sure that I know _how_ to be one."

She turned her back on him to resume her packing. He wrapped his arms around her with such suddenness, that he engulfed her smaller frame with his own. The scent of her perfume, the relaxer in her hair was intoxicating. She threw her head back and exposed her neckline...collarbone...and the top of her breast to him. She reached back and found his manhood already stiffening against her buttock.

She was the one usually seducing him during times of crisis in their marriage. _And honestly...she is at it_ again. _She's been seducing me from the moment we walked into the bedroom. I'm just late to the gathering._ But he would let her claim another victory in this war between them, if only she didn't go. "I'm begging you to stay," Seth said as he ran his lips along her neck line. "We can fix this."

Angel gently but firmly removed herself from his embrace, spun around, and smoothed out her clothes. "I have to go, Seth." She announced to him. "I'll call you as often as I can. I'm sorry."

He snatched at her arm with quickness beyond reason, beyond relief. Anger had superseded reason and he found himself in unexplored territory and it was lost of him exactly what to _do_ next.

Angel gave him his answer.

He needed to defend himself.

Angel pushed his hand off of her and attempted to knee him with her right leg in the crotch. Perhaps it was some type of male intuition that caused him to be prepared for such a maneuver as he blocked her first and second attempt successfully with the lower half of frame. Unfortunately, that left his topside vulnerable for a counter attack and Angel took full advantage. She jabbed him twice above his right eye socket with her left fist.

She'd proven herself ultra-flexible and even athletic during their exotic romps in bed, but here physical strength was proving far more just a nuisance as she connected again with another punch that _hurt_ , this time on his jaw.

He found an opening as she swung wildly and missed, and used all of her 125 pounds against her and shoved her at the top of her arm, sideways on to the bed. _Don't escalate this,_ he thought, whether it was intended more for him or her he could not say. She cursed at him again. Angel's big brown eyes were full of fire and brimstone and _focus_.

This time she kicked at him and found success as the inside of his thigh and crotch paid a steep price. For the first time since this episode began Seth felt the bite of almost unbearable of pain.

He backhanded his wife in retaliation.

The world stops...and so does Angel...and her suddenly frail body lands on the bed flat on her back.

" _Oh, my God_ ," Seth dove on top of the bed and on top of her. "Angel, I'm sorry. I'm _so_ sorry." And he is filled with dread not only in the fact that he has struck a woman for the first time in his life, but he has struck a woman with federal agents parked on the curb outside his house. He has allowed his anger and more so his _pride_ to put his career, to put his freedom in jeopardy.

" _Get_. _Off_."

"I'm sorry." Seth said pointlessly again. He wished he could take it all back.

They stayed like that a while, that odd positioning with him on top her, almost pinning her down for what had seemed a long time. He took some assurance, selfishly so, that the FBI didn't hear this exchange, because the doorbell hadn't chimed, or they hadn't knocked the door down and a score of agents hadn't piled in the room and jumped on top of him.

Instead he and his wife looked into one another's eyes. He looked into her magical big browns, and he could see his grays reflected in hers. She didn't try to punch him anymore, or head butt him, or even bite him. In fact, her body went lax; she exposed the other side of her face, the one that _wasn't_ slightly swollen to him.

"I deserved that, Seth." When he tried to speak, she shook her head slowly, and shushed him as softly as one of her kisses on his cheek might have been. For the entire dishonor I've brought to our marriage, I deserved it." A single tear ran down her smooth cheek and it _frightened_ him more than any moment during the actual fight. She didn't cry at their wedding. She didn't cry when she suffered bouts of pain in her leg as the result of her bout with polio as a young child. She didn't even cry when they buried her father. But she _was_ crying now. Go ahead, Seth, you get one more shot at me, for the future dishonor I would bring to you if I _stay."_

He felt suddenly ill. "I don't want that, Angel. I don't want to fight with you at all."

He backed off of her and she sat up and perched her weight on her elbows. "I'm allowing you a free shot. I'm advising you to take it." She said, in a low dangerous voice. "Because if you ever lay a hand on me after my offer expires, I'll kill you Seth; you know what I'm capable of. There are already three people buried because of me."

Angel pushed herself off of the bed. Seth reached to help her, but she slapped his hand aside. He guesses that she has decided to shower after she reaches Atlanta because she limped over to the bedroom mirror, touched up her face, brushed her hair, and changed from one button up blouse to another. Seth saw his reflection close in behind her, but he keeps a cautious distance between the two of them.

"You've always told me that you have been responsible for _two_ deaths, Angel."

"There's Brody." She said, her blouse still fully open, exposing her bra and cleavage to him in the mirror.

Seth nodded. "He was the fugitive who came looking for your father during one of the times he left you in that old house alone. After three days of being his hostage, he made a sexual advance on you and you stabbed him to death."

It was her turn to nod. "Eight years later, a young man named Kenny Traylor learned his valuable fatal lesson."

"He did." Seth said as she buttoned the blouse at last, doused perfume on each wrist and put her trinkets in place. "Traylor learned that when a woman says no she means it. You defended yourself and your actions were cleared in a court of law." When Angel spun around she grabbed her bag and began to exit their bedroom. He stepped in her path but retained the separation between them.

"Angel, what is this _third_ incident?" He asked his wife. She had shared the other two instances with him...again, tearlessly...on their wedding night.

"My mother died birthing me," Angel said as a matter of fact and without emotion. "So I'm responsible for killing her too."

Seth lost all of the strength in his leg and tumbled to the edge of the bed and seems paralyzed in his attempt to move thereafter.

Angel limped to the mouth of the doorway and spoke to him without turning to face him; perhaps the tears have found a home on her face again. "I'm screwed up, Seth. I am a drunk...a functional one considering the detail I pay my work, but a drunk nonetheless."

"Are you a whore as well?"

Now she did face him, and did she have the audacity to for anger to be plastered on her brow or was the look lodged there meant to mean something else? "I don't like to be alone." Angel could nothing more as her look softened.

"And us?" Seth asked. "You specialize in Clinical Psychology, Dr. Angel Hicks- Dupree. You specialize in the integration of the science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective and behavioral well-being and personal development." He'd memorized the definition over the years. "What is the diagnosis for us moving forward?"

An hour later Seth learned that even the king sized mattress couldn't hold his weight on its edge and he'd slipped aimlessly to the floor. He had a bed, bedroom, and a home that was already too large for a couple, grew exponentially larger and lonelier still now that _he_ was alone after Angel had given the best answer she could muster to his last question and had left for Atlanta with the FBI. He was still staring at the bedroom's doorway where she'd stood, even now.

There was a _pop_ , and then a _bang_ rising from the surround sound in their bedroom that startled him. And for the first time Seth realized that during his scuffle with his wife, they had somehow managed to switch the television back on. He was now viewing how a scene had played out from the first night of the siege that had been caught on amateur video. Shots had been fired from inside the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, and some of the protestors and other curious citizens were scattering for cover. Half dozen Peacekeepers had drawn their weapons in response and had taken what Seth surmised as strategic positing around the building. _Where are you going, Angel?_ He asked himself. _What are you getting yourself into?_

For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath—waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.

He hoped to breathe again.

He hoped.

Seth reached for his cell phone and hit a private investigator he had on speed dial. The man was a pig both in size and appearance, but had proven professional, trustworthy and damned good at finding Angel's whereabouts over the years. He finally answered on the third ring. He spoke in a sleepy voice. The other man, Lawson, listened to Seth's latest complaints about Angel. Seth knew putting the man up in motels in Atlanta would be expensive—but instead of the private dick quoting him a rate on his retainer he said, "Doc, why don't you invest that money in a good lawyer. Or even a _bad_ lawyer." Seth felt the phone slip from his fingers and fall to the carpet, but the speaker had been engaged. "Man, you're a surgeon. I know you are used to fixing things." The other man hesitated, clearing morning bile from his throat. "You're not going to fix _her,_ Doc."

The private detective hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Seth got to his knees, crawled to the nightstand, got the phonebook out to find Lawson's replacement. He flung the phonebook and toppled an expensive vase from the other side of the room instead and found himself sitting on the carpet as he had before.

Another hour later Seth had gotten himself together enough to make two more phone calls; the first was a straight forward call to the HR department of Atlanta's General Hospital. Dr. Seth Dupree had been assigned to a statewide trauma team. They'd already seen action after last month's earthquake and subsequent tremors. He was required to train with the team out of their main base of operations at the Atlanta General Hospital location for four weeks out of the year.

He couldn't see a more ideal time to train than right now.

The General's HR department would contact his own workplace and finalize the deal. If he needed more time in Atlanta, he'd had some vacation weeks available to him.

He began dialing the second number...stopped with four digits still remaining...thought long and hard about completing the call...and pressed the end button, terminating his call to the other party, for now.

The Gray man got to his feet, grabbed his own travel bag from his side of the walk in closet, pulled out the pistol that he had stored inside of the bag, filled the chamber with bullets, set the alarm on the door and remembered his wife's answer to his formal question about them moving forward before she had turned and walked away from him.

_Our vows say through sickness and health, Seth._ She had said. _I think I qualify for well beyond sick. I want a divorce, Seth. Please grant me one._

For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath—waiting; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.

He hoped to breathe again.

He hoped.

And then he locked the front door behind him.
Chapter Three

We as men of color have put ourselves in a poor position to demand anything from anyone. So we must first and foremost always practice self-respect, self-restraint, and self-reliance. Responsible behavior commands admiration from our families, our communities and our countrymen as a whole. Only a righteous man may seek retribution for the rooster's sins that he has committed against our brethren.

-Isaac Prince, leader of a House in Chains in July 1976
Chris

**Fox Theatre, Midtown Atlanta, 2** nd **Day**

He realized that the events that had transpired first thing this morning had mirrored the final, traumatic happenings of the previous night. He wished, not for the first time that these episodes had fared differently— without the loss of life especially, and yet the civilian— the _human_ inside of him wished he'd attempted to run to freedom with the one female who had made it out alive.

A pregnant woman and her mother had used the need to go the bathroom as their excuse to disappear out of sight for a few minutes. The lounge in front of the ladies bathroom bore a fountain for decoration sitting in front of it. There was a pool of blood now flowing along with the water. A significant trail of blood and brains and marrow led back to the great room he and the other hostages were being held.

In his mind's eye, Chris could see that woman's mother stuffing her daughter, who was in the latter stages of her pregnancy, out of one those windows in the bathroom. _But you folks took too long. Pandora became suspicious. They sent a guard to find you._ Agent Christopher Prince remembered hearing the shots clearly. He also remembered feeling knots tie in his gut when two of these guards drug the mother's limp corpse back into the great room.

The next thing that transpired next frightened him worse.

Luna Belle, who he had come to recognize as the second in command of this operation, fired a handful of rounds into an already dead body as an act of imitation. It worked. Chris could see the shift in attitudes from the hostages. It wasn't about the pleas and prayers for mercy, or even at the maddening screaming at the act of horror they'd all witnessed, but an overall sense of hopelessness and dread that fell over the crowd was like a dark cloud hovering above the theatre. The hostages _thought_ they might die before. They _knew_ it now.

"Prince," He heard a voice whispering his name.

He didn't look around right away. Instead, he got a feel for where the dozen gunmen—or _women_ were. All of the Pandora agents involved in the operation, with the exception of the leader, were _all_ women. _That is one reason they took this building with such little resistance. Who would have expected a group of ladies who had gone out for an evening show capable of such violence? T_ hey'd truly had the element of surprise on their side. In fact when they begin roping in from all areas of the theatre, Prince, like many others in attendance, thought the act was part of the show. _They looked like bats flying around a belfry._

Chris turned around at last to put a face to the voice that called his name.

"My people are positioned the best they can be under the circumstances, they are prepped, and ready to counterstrike on my command." The man said. Chris cursed to himself, unable to place the other's name with the dark, hard face hovering ten feet in front of him. "Are you with us?"

" _Your people_ ," Chris made the statement a curse. "No. Call off whatever you have planned. There are too many guards here and they are armed with semiautomatic and fully automatic weapons. What you are planning is nothing short of suicide, not only for your followers, but these innocent civilians as well."

Special Agent Christopher Prince:

He was of average height and was 39 years old now. He'd gained twenty pounds around his middle but most friends thought he carried the extra weight well; w _hich means that I look worse than I already thought._ He was one shade darker than midnight, his coloring so absolute and finite it was almost beautiful in its own opaqueness. He was clean shaven from the crown of his head to his Adam's apple: No mustache, no goatee, and no eyebrows; no hair of any type adorned his skin.

The other man rested his weight on his elbows before laying all the way back on the floor and closing his eyes for a moment. _His people,_ Chris thought. O _kay, so you're one of the Peacekeepers...no...you're something, somebody even further up Xavier's chain of command than even that._

"I only wanted to know if you stood with us or not. I wasn't asking for a tactical analyst of the situation or your consent, Agent Christopher Prince."

"You know who I am?"

The other man's grin betrayed the confidence of someone who was in clear control of the conversation. He reopened his eyes, carefully pulled a penny from his pocket and began tossing it up once and then again and again. "Number One suggests that the other members of The Circle familiar ourselves with all of our adversaries. Even if one of the antagonists is his own flesh and blood. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, especially tonight. How are you holding up?"

Chris finally put a name to a face and cursed in a low voice. "You're Morgan aren't you? Quincy Morgan." Chris scanned the room's perimeter to update himself on the female guards positioning. The hostages had been allowed to converse amongst themselves but he wasn't willing to risk them spying in on _this_ conversation. He lowered his voice until it was damn well soft and faint as if he were singing a lullaby to hush a crying baby. "You are The House in Chains Sargent at Arms, and the number three in command of The Circle. Well, at least that's the hypothesis being shared back at the field office."

Morgan nodded.

Quincy Morgan:

He was an olive skinned black man who Chris thought was the picture of fitness and all the handsome features a man of color could wish for. He had big thoughtful eyes, a clean shaven face, an expensive diamond stud in each ear and a fresh haircut. He kept tossing that penny in the air once and again and again. _You don't come off as the nervous type, Quincy;_ the experienced investigator inside his gut told Chris, _that penny represents unfinished business with something...or_ someone. _I'd give a king's ransom to know who._ Chris found himself staring at the other man's physique longer underneath his silk shirt longer than he intended, hoping Morgan wouldn't take his interest as anything sexual. _I was you once, Quincy._ Instead, he was again reminded that how he was bulging along his own midsection. In fact he'd made an appointment and finally seen his private doctor a few days earlier. The follow up appointment was scheduled for today. He'd been from suffering occasional stomach pains and his overall energy level hadn't been up to his usual standards.

_Concentrate on the present,_ Chris told himself. The holding area stank of piss and other waste as the remaining hostages had been forced to urinate in the flower pots that were located within. Again, Prince reminded himself they'd been allowed conversation and even some movement, but they were encouraged to keep their voices low and absolutely forbidden from standing up. A weighty gentleman asked for permission to approach one of the makeshift toilets, one of the lithe shaped guards sneered, patted him down, and used her rifle to point him towards one of the flower pots.

Chris thought it ironic that this room was designed to give life to a recreation of the temple for Ramses II, the Egyptian Pharaoh who set Moses and the Hebrew nation free only to hunt them down, if the old Bible story could be believed. Now, today, mostly people of color were waiting to be set free from this building.

Quincy Morgan scooted along the floor past of two sobbing young women and found an open spot amongst the humanity, and sat next to Chris. One of the female guards took notice, but seemed more interested at the length of her fingernails at that moment. Chris only offered her a moment's glance in return. He only had eyes for Luna Belle and another man Chris had recognized immediately when he first laid eyes on him last night: Benny Stanton, a former ATF guy who Chris had worked together with on an investigation in Alabama a few years back when the latter man was still on the right side of the law.

Luna Belle:

She was an angular and lissome shaped blonde whose hardened gaze seemed fixed permanently on her face.

Benny Stanton:

He was of late middle age with white blonde hair, deep blue eyes and spoke with a tied tongue.

When Morgan settled next to Chris the Special Agent said, "My brother would advise against whatever you are planning, Quincy." Chris said.

"Perhaps," Morgan said and pushed the penny deep down into his pocket. "We are outnumbered and outgunned, but I take to using small advantages where I can find them. And since you people believe in the chain of command, you'll understand when I say I'm going to use my seat in The Circle to advocate change to our current status as helpless sheep."

"Stanton should have issued their demands by now. The wolf _wants_ something or we would all have been killed last night during the initial siege. _Yes, they would have all been killed like poor Catherine over there._ Chris Prince's date had been mowed down by the indiscriminate automatic weapon's fire during the first few minutes of the attack. _It was a precipice of the siege._ The gunfire was designed to start a mass of people running in a single direction so that Stanton's team could better control them.

_I'm so sorry, Catherine. I never even knew your family name, but it doesn't mean that I won't mourn for you when the time is right._ He gave her slender figure, her corpse lying face down in a pool of her own blood, one last respectful glance before he turned his attention back to Morgan.

"Negotiations won't favor these hostages." Morgan stopped and cursed. "I believe Stanton is acting independent of Serena's authority." Chris failed to mask his reaction. "I see you believe that as well. Tennyson's orders run more direct and straight forward than this operation is being carried out. You were right when you said we should have all been killed last night like that woman you knew lying over there. We weren't. This whole siege is about the release of James Carter. Stanton is tight with him. They're trying to exchange the lives of these hostages for the freedom of that racist son of a bitch."

Chris nodded, Morgan sharing most of his views as well. "Alright, will whoever is still in charge of The Circle release him to Stanton's custody?"

The veins in Morgan's neck rippled and he swallowed hard. Yet, there was a sadness that clouded one eye, if only for a second. There had been a change in leadership on The Circle. Chris could feel it. "We are no different than your FBI brethren, Agent Prince. We don't negotiate with terrorist." And then for the first time since this conversation began, Morgan looked away. "Anyway, we don't have Carter or know of his exact whereabouts."

"Great."

In the meantime Stanton and Luna Belle nodded at one another, looked directly at the two men, seemingly coming to some type of agreement on how to proceed with an urgent matter. Two of the brunette guards met them along the route and escorted them through the hall of the great room, parting the frightened hostages who gasped and ducked their heads as the group approached and then passed them by, afraid that they would halt their progression where they sat and would had singled them out for execution.

The group headed straight in line to where Special Agent Christopher Prince and Sargent at Arms Quincy Morgan were seated.

"Listen to me, Chris, because we don't have much time left. Your brother loves you." Morgan said. "Men of Color don't express these feelings to one another enough. I will protect you. He would want that. I'll make sure that our true enemies regret what they've done here today."

In his mind's eye Chris could see an embodiment of himself last night. When he first heard the shots rang out and people around him started dying, he'd silently vowed that somehow—someway he would find a way to survive the madness.

Chris Prince had decided that he was going to _live_.

He was a highly trained FBI Agent, but that hadn't numbed him from his human traits of fear and anxiety. Life was God's most precious gift. He wasn't going to throw his away over a hyper sensed sense of duty or arrogance, or stupidity. He had tossed his concealed weapon into a nearby flower arraignment after a counterattack seemed implausible last night. The location was far enough away that if the gun were found that it couldn't be tied directly to him, yet close enough to make a run at it if his life depended on its use.

Now he knew he wouldn't reach the weapon in time.

Stanton stalked over him while the women made a perimeter around him. There would be no escape. " _Choo_ are Christopher Prince. _Choo_ are guilty of being a FBI Agent, _choo_ are guilty of being the lone sibling of our sworn enemy, Xavier Prince, and frankly, _choo_ are guilty of being the unluckiest bastard I know."

"I am." He carefully said in response. "I am all of those things."

Luna Belle stepped in front of Stanton in one, smooth motion and pointed the barrel of her automatic weapon at his forehead. "You will come with me."

"Where," Chris raised his hands, but struggled to keep fear out of his tone. "Where are you taking me?"

Luna Bell disengaged the safety on her trigger in another smooth motion. "You will get you ass up and you will come with me with no questions asked, Agent Prince, or you will die right here, right now, in front of all these people."

Morgan said, "Why wait?" And then his voice boomed throughout the great room. "What are you waiting for woman? Kill him _now."_

What are you doing, Quincy? Why—

Stanton snorted and joined Chris in rolling his eyes at the other man. " _Chiss_ matter doesn't concern _choo_ , sir. Obviously we are all under a great deal of stress, but why don't _choo_ dial it back a notch and try to relax."

" _You are_ _beyond incompetent!_ Serena should have taught you never to make threats that you are unwilling or _unable_ to carry out _."_ Morgan stood and waved his arms long and wide like a maniac. "The only way to maintain your control over such a large crowd is through fear. You need to do what you say you will do. _If you are to kill this man, then do it right now!"_

The hostages went into fervor. There were spasms of crying and one woman screamed for her God to save her. Even the two men who Chris had seen engaging in friendly conversation with Morgan earlier, looked at him with trepidation and uncertainty now.

Belle had had enough and turned the barrel of her weapon away from Chris to a newer, slender target. " _Shut up_." She cursed Morgan. "Sit down and shut up or I'll—"

"Kill me?" Morgan's laughter roared through the ball room, the hallways, throughout the entire Fox Theatre. Perhaps all of Atlanta heard the man mocking these two to their faces. "I am Quincy Morgan, Sargent at Arms of a House in Chains and I am already dead. Do what you will with my remains. I have taken the mark. I have visualized my people's future and I see days filled with misery and pain."

Chris studied Stanton and Belle as they breached their own protocols and openly argued about how to proceed in front of all the others. He scanned his perimeter and saw the female guards shifting in their stances as if their boots won't hold them in place much longer. He prayed that Quincy won't go for Belle's gun, but prepared himself to disarm Stanton or whichever of the guards posed the most immediate threat and defend these remaining hostages if this situation continued to erode or die trying.

Stanton announced his decision with a tenacity that dares _anyone_ to challenge his authority. " _Cheeze that man,"_ One of the women guards points her weapon at Morgan's skull while the other uses the barrel of her gun to nudge him towards the back of the room.

"The rest of you strip down, right now." Luna Belle commanded.

Stanton raised a brow embedded more in curiosity than in anger as his second ushered the command again with more urgency. "What are _choo_ looking for, Luna?"

"I want to know if any more of our _guest_ have taken the mark." Belle's tone took on a more respectful tone. "We should isolate members of A House in Chains from the rest of our captives and execute them first if our demands aren't met in a timely manner by the FBI."

Stanton nodded silently in agreement.

Christopher Prince struggled to hold his trembling hands still as he is forced back into sitting position while he watched Stanton and Belle haul Quincy Morgan towards the back of the theatre and the certain death that awaited him out of sight of the others.

One by one the hostages began to disrobe. They had gone from losing their freedom to losing their hope to now losing their dignity as piles of clothes littered the great room's floor. Many of them stared up at him as hope for all their very survival dwindled. _You were supposed to serve us_ ; their gazes appeared to say and burned hot as fire. _You were_ _supposed to protect us;_ their looks beg to say and run cold as ice.

"Do what you must," Quincy Morgan's voice faltered as he passed nearly out of audible range and at last Chris could no longer see him. "I am unafraid to die. That makes me the most dangerous man in the world."

_That is where you are mistaken,_ Chris thought, removing his shirt and pants, flinging them angrily into the growing mound on the floor.

He knew that Thomas Pepper, a noted journalist and blogger had christened another with that designation in his last book.

The most dangerous man in the entire world is my brother, Xavier Prince.
Xavier

**Calhoun State Prison (Alpha Wing); Morgan, Georgia, 3** rd **Day**

Xavier heard a platoon of correctional officers angling down the cold corridors, coming for _him_ at last.

They came for him while he inhaled the last of his Newport, and thumbed through the last chapter of a biography about his father, Isaac Prince, the founder of A House in Chains.

By the sounds echoing down the hall, they came for him in _force_ , so Xavier shelved his book in alphabetical order next to the dozens of others in his cell, exhaled the smoke in one long, blue stream and began undressing. He had an odd sense of déjà vu but couldn't explain the sensation to himself. He was tugging at his boxers with only his chill bumps to warm him when he heard the master key twisting in the lock allowing his visitors inside.

Xavier showed him his back and spread his arms against the nearest brick wall in preparation to be frisked, his tell tossed. In whatever manner this frisking or tossing was carried to completion was entirely up to the guards. Four inmates had died in recent months under suspicious circumstances here at Calhoun State Prison and Xavier Prince had no wish to add his name to that list.

"Good morning," Xavier said, his head locked in the forward position.

No one returned his greeting, once again. Instead, he heard a _woman's_ voice with a throaty tone and carrying an enormous shadow as she instructed her cohorts to toss his cell and pat him down for weapons. He nearly broke his own protocol in an attempt to match the husky voice to a face; women were not uncommon at Calhoun, but to see woman with her sheer _size_ would have been an unexpected treat before breakfast.

One of the guards asked what the need in patting him down was. He _was_ standing in his birthday suit for Christ sake. Xavier kept his eyes trained forward throughout the entire process, but his curiosity made this unusually difficult. The woman stranger asked for his permission to do the deed herself and when he nodded his approval, she did began to feel around his crotch, while one of the other guards went through his belongings scattered around the cell.

"Turn around, Prince." She commanded after she stepped back to an adequate distance. "My name if Officer Rose Dixon. The new warden, Donald Bright, is expecting to see you in his office in his office immediately.

Rose Dixon:

She was at least 6'4" tall. She was thick of neck, triceps and calves and despite a pleasant enough face and a dirty blonde ponytail, Xavier guessed she was often mistaken for a man.

She was a magnificent specimen.

He stood there stamped to this spot as naked as the day he was born and couldn't take his eyes off of her.

"Warden Bright?" He'd asked after a moment of composing himself.

Officer Dixon shifted her weight in impatience. "In the past 36 hours, Warden Bright received his orders from the State of Georgia, to govern this prison and all the populace that reside inside its walls." She said in a deep voice. "Warden Fain has been reassigned." She cut her brown eyes at him. "Reading your file, I'm sure you're already familiar with the change in power."

_Reassigned or have you gotten yourself fired, Farris,_ Xavier wondered. She was correct in the assumption that he was privy to the information that she'd shared with him. _Yet, The State of Georgia moved Warden Fain out of Calhoun faster than even I thought probable._ Good. They'd probably spared themselves thousands of dollars in covering the brute's funeral sources if he stayed at Calhoun much longer.

Officer Dixon's dark tone grew sardonic. "If you don't have any more questions, Inmate Prince, you should get your clothes on. I don't like to keep the warden waiting."

"Then let's go." Xavier said.

An entourage of eight more guards had been waiting outside the cell and received the four people who stepped into the cold, dark, corridor. Xavier matched their pace until he halted his progress and squatted to speak to an old jailbird who was camped on the floor of his cell. The old man was rumored to be 90 years old and had been in The Georgia Correctional System for over 70 years now. He was blind and nearly deaf and grunted and squealed more than he talked these days. Xavier gave the man a wide smile, "When I return from my visit with the new warden, I want you to tell me another story of your escapades when you ransacked Valdosta when you were a teenager."

The old man leaned closer, not hearing Xavier, the younger man repeated himself and the old man let out a laugh that would lift the spirits in a graveyard. He said something to Xavier unfathomable, grunted, and laughed again.

Xavier Prince rose to his feet, waved his hand at the old timer and fell in step with his escorts.

Xavier Prince never could say goodbye.

Warden Donald Bright:

He was a well-built man who had high cheek bones, straight teeth, and blonde hair that screamed to strangers that he could have been a successful salesman or second tier Hollywood actor if he had wanted, instead of being a simple prison warden.

He was completing some forms, writing with his left hand when Xavier, Rose Dixon, and two of the guards entered his office, the final guard closing the door behind him without being told. Xavier took a familiar spot in front of the warden's desk. The office was rectangle shaped, with cracks lacing the walls and floors. There were boxes scattered everywhere. Warden Bright hadn't had the chance to unpack his belongings yet.

Xavier waited.

After ten minutes, Warden Bright tossed his pen aside, dismissed the remaining two guards with a Louisianan accent, while Rose Dixon took a few giants paces forward and secured herself at the warden's right side. Another minute passed and finally the younger man acknowledged Xavier's presence.

"Somehow, I expected you to be taller." Warden Donald Bright announced. "Sit down, Prince." Warden Bright waved the back of his right hand towards where Rose Dixon was standing. "I'm sure Rose—I mean _Officer_ Dixon—introduced herself to you already. We must follow those mandated protocols mustn't we, Rose?"

"Yes, sir," The large woman actually smiled.

"We've served The Georgia State Correctional System together for what...Rose, nearly ten years now haven't we?"

"Actually 12, sir," Xavier acknowledged a color in her otherwise pale face and a gleam in Rose's dull brown eyes that hadn't existed when she extracted him from his cell. This was more than a working relationship—in her mind at the least.

"My, my, my," Warden Bright flashed a million dollar smile at her. She melted. "How time flies when you are having fun."

Xavier needed a cigarette. He crossed his legs and sat back in his chair instead. "You have your own private shield, Warden, how convenient?"

Warden Bright didn't waste further time denying the obvious. "Rose here has helped me out of some tight spots here and there."

Rose face shifted back to its normal mode as she folds her arms, eyeing Xavier Prince the entire time. _Alright, I get it, you are prepared to defend him against in threat I may pose._ If he weren't scheduled to be released over the next day or two he might—just might—find this new relationship between the three of them interesting. "Why am I here, Warden?" Xavier asked into the room's silence.

"You are direct, Prince. I can appreciate that, so I won't delay the inevitable any longer: My predecessor's formal inquiry concluded that the death by beheading of inmate Michael Davenport and three prison guards could not have been carried out alone by the other two inmates who also perished that day." He said, looking from one page of the report to another. "You know, I don't believe it either. At least one, if not two other men were on that floor when this all went down. And somehow the weapon used to cut Davenport's head off has yet to be found."

Xavier and Julian Moore sprinted back to their cells while the two bigger men stayed behind and bought them time, dealing with the mass of humanity exiting the mess hall after lunch when Xavier failed to get Intel from Davenport. Xavier wasn't a praying man, but had stopped by the chapel every day since to pay his respects to _all_ of the men who lost their lives that afternoon.

"How does any of this connect to me?"

Warden Bright slid two black and white photos from his stash of papers over to the other side of desk where Xavier could reach them. Xavier felt his pulse quicken. So he reached, ever slowly for a toothpick from a bottle, stuck it in his mouth, since having a cigarette would be impossible right now and studied the photographs.

Warden Bright was saying, "I find it...interesting...that both of the dead black inmates at the scene wore the mark on their necks, a mark terribly similar to the one tattooed on the side of your neck as well. Help me out here, Prince; the tattoo is of a chain for A House in Chains? Or am I off track here?"

Xavier chewed on his toothpick, studied the photos a minute longer and pushed them back to Warden Bright's side of the desk. Rose Dixon shifted in her stance. Satisfied in his silence, Xavier sat back in his chair. "Surely, I can't be held responsible for the violence perpetrated by two deranged individuals," Xavier said smoothly. "There are millions of People of Color across America who has taken the mark. I've met with at least 50 men in this prison alone who have sworn an allegiance to our cause, who have visualized our people's future."

"Yes," Warden Bright said carefully. "They have seen days filled with misery and pain or so I've heard."

"Anyway," Xavier continued. "Should I be held responsible for the misdeeds of any man who bears the mark in this prison?"

Warden Bright's brows curled. "Come now, Prince, and be reasonable. You wouldn't dismiss this event as if it were mere chance would you?"

"Life is God's most precious gift." These were Chris' words. Xavier's brother owned the gift of expression that he would never have. "Even the life of a lesser form of human like Michael Davenport means something to me, Warden. Still, I'm sure your predecessor's reports that I was in my cell and otherwise detained when this went down?"

Warden Bright flipped through a few pages...and back again before he finally gave up looking for the specific citation. "21 inmates and four prison guards testified that they saw you in your cell at some point when this carnage was taking place if my memory serves me."

"Well there you are," Xavier went to stand, putting this meeting to an end.

"Sit down, Prince." Warden Bright said with some bile. "There's more."

Xavier tugged at his pants legs and sat back in his chair and resumed chewing on his toothpick. _We didn't miss a step in planning our escape back to the cells. Be cool, Prince, and play this man's game until he is satisfied._

It was Donald Bright's turn to sit back in his chair. He rocked back and forth and back again until the chair would no longer hold him down. "You do know, as old as Calhoun may be that this prison has a sophisticated surveillance system. What's unique about this system is that if there are any disruptions in the feed, alarms are set off and those who monitor the system are immediately alerted."

"A wise precaution,"

"But the most ultra-modern system can't compensate for tampering. Come over this side of the desk, Prince. I want you to see this."

Prince slid his petite frame to the opposite side of the desk, to Rose Dixon's displeasure. "What am I looking at, Warden?"

"Just pay attention to this section here...right behind where the two large inmates were standing, just before they rushed Davenport and beheaded him with what I'm guessing was probably was a machete."

Xavier did as he was bid without comment. The video played back showing exactly as Warden Bright...and his own memory recalled. Once Davenport refused to give up the when and where of what turned out to be The 411 attacks in Atlanta, Prince ordered the man killed. Julian Moore, like Xavier, just out of the camera's visual snapped his finger and brought a guard—who'd taken the mark as well—onto the scene who provided the weapon to behead Davenport.

The two other inmates, a homosexual couple nicknamed Sampson and Delilah, intentionally and _voluntarily_ stood in the camera's view, stayed behind to distract the coming guards while Xavier and Julian Moore made their escape along a preordained route back their individual cells.

Xavier finally observed what the warden had noticed was off about the playback: A small bird that had flown outside the window and provided a shadow against the bright sunshine of that afternoon.

"You saw it too, Prince." Warden Bright said. "As I said before, the system is designed to identify any disruption. It can't compensate for someone intentionally giving it the same feed over and over. The shadow of that bird passing not once but again and _again_ gives that away."

"I've been in this business almost my entire adult life, Prince. I've seen it _all,_ or at least I thought I had." Warden Bright spat. "I've seen inmates kill other inmates or guards out of fear of reprisal, or out of a blind sense of loyalty to a group or cause. I've _never_ seen what is going on in the short time I've been here. Who are you really, Prince? Who are you to command such respect, authority and even... _love_ from what amounts to strangers blindly doing your bidding?"

In the long term, Xavier Prince had neither the time nor the desire to have a prolonged conflict with this man, but he dared not appear weak in the presence of any Rooster at any time. His time in this hell hole was drawing to a close; he might as well test the waters of release right now. "Fortunately for everyone involved, I will be out of your hair in just under 48 hours. This complex web of influence that you swear that I weave at this facility will be at an end."

Warden Donald Bright spun around and gazed out of his window into the courtyard and then the highway beyond. "And where will you go, Prince." All of the enthusiasm of the warden's discovery had evaporated from his voice. "And what will you do with so much power?"

Xavier surprised himself by answering. "I'm headed...elsewhere... nowhere...I'll guess I'll know when I arrive _._ I'll always go where I'm needed. I'll continue to pursue equality and justice for my people."

The other man spun back around and swiped at the folders on his desk in one motion, and knocked most of them to the floor. He hopped on the floor and flipped again through the mess in hot pursuit of something that Xavier could not identify. Finally, he pinched another photo between his fingertips, Rose Dixon ever present at his side when he stood at full height again.

"This is the photo of Larry Gleason, security guard. He was a husband and a father to three children." The warden said. "All life is precious, Prince, didn't we both agree to that point a second ago."

"We do," Xavier said in a calm tone. _48 hours, Prince. In two days this entire conversation will be but a footnote to my stay in this Godforsaken place._

"Do we really? Or do you consider Gleason a lesser man like you called Davenport simply because of the color of his skin? Is he—what is the term your people have coined these days—just another _Rooster._ Is he just another White Man that rises before any other animal on the farm, searching for a fresh way to keep a Person of Color down and out? "

"Don't put words in my mouth, Warden." Xavier said in a dangerous voice that Rose Dixon caught breath of immediately. "I mourned for his family's loss like I did all the others involved."

"He had a mortgage to pay, Prince. He had hopes and dreams. He had three children, for _Christ sake."_

Xavier turned on him, his anger rising to the surface like an erupting volcano. " _I have two boys as well, Warden_." Just as suddenly Xavier willed his muscles in his neck to relax. He had heard Rose Dixon grab her nightstick and he doubted she would return it to her holster before his visit was completed. "This justice system of yours has stolen fourteen months of my life over trumped up charges of Grand Larceny. Our government is convinced A House in Chains is dealing weapons to Western African nations like Liberia and Sierra Leone for a profit in funding its cold war with Pandora." He leaned into the warden's face. Neither man broke eye contact. "They've stolen 14 months from my time with _my_ boys, Warden. They needed me out of the way, while Pandora tried to destroy everything my father built."

Rose Dixon stuck her baton into Xavier's chest and forced him back.

"You were a lawyer, Prince. You should know that trafficking weapons to foreign agents is illegal under the law." Warden Bright reminded him.

"As it should be," Xavier felt a throbbing in his temple come...and subside just as quickly. He sat back down, needing a cigarette more than ever before. "How convenient for your system, that these weapons or all of this cash were never found."

"Just as the weapon that beheaded Davenport will never be found; or justice brought to the real men who were behind what happened that day ever will be found either." Bright said with a trace of bitterness in his tone.

The warden chose to remain standing. Rose Dixon planted her large frame in the space between Xavier and the warden.

"What is it that you want from me, Warden?" Xavier asked.

" _Respect of self_ ," The warden said with a blank look on his face.

"What?" Xavier asked as the land line rang four times before Warden Bright seemed to acknowledge its existence at all. "What did you say?"

"Those were your father's words. That was part of his first mandate after he founded A House in Chains all of those years ago." The phone on the warden's desk rang itself out. " _Respect from family and then respect from the community—"_

Xavier heard an urgent banging on the warden's door.

"I'm busy right now." Bright shouted in the door's direction. He never unfixed his gaze on Xavier. "I've read both of Thomas Pepper's books on race relations in this country. I've fixed his interviews and subsequent chapters on you to memory."

"Have you, now?" Xavier asked. "I remember those interviews with Pepper as well. He is an _interesting_ man."

Whoever was outside of the door hadn't left. The voice pleaded with the warden to admit him. For the first time since Xavier sat down in this room, Rose Dixon looked unsure of whether the warden was in full control of himself or the situation at hand.

"Thomas wrote that one of your most compelling traits is that you had a genuine sense of honor. He said that you always told the truth." Warden Bright leaned over his desk. "Why don't you put this charade to an end and fill in the gaps of what this video doesn't reveal. Why don't you tell Rose and me the _truth_ of what really happened that afternoon a couple of weeks back?"

The two men stared at one another a long time—when the prison's alarm blared.

Xavier Prince and Rose Dixon jumped at the sound. Warden Donald Bright kept his gaze fixed on Xavier, almost oblivious, a bitter smile beginning to grace his lips. _He's cooler than even I am. He truly has ice running in his veins._ Circumstance guaranteed that Xavier could never call this man a friend, but he admired the collective way he carried himself. "Did you have Davenport killed?" Bright's voice was barely audible through the wailing of the alarm. "I want to know if Pepper had you judged correctly."

Three officers from Xavier's escort used their passcodes to bypass the lock and let themselves in, their weapons drawn. "My apologies, Warden," The most senior of the men had blood dripping from a gash of his forehead, and sweat was pouring from his armpits. "We had no idea whether you were in danger or not—"

"It's alright, Thompson." Warden Bright said. "What is going on?"

Thompson took a deep breath and steeled himself. "We have an emergency situation up on the third floor. A full-fledged riot is on. We've estimated that 70 to 75 percent of Calhoun's population is loose. Our situation is critical."

Warden Bright stood, but if he was in panic mode he wore the look of anxiety like a new suit. He pulled his jacket off, kneeled at a safe besides his desk, zipped through the combination and produced a nine millimeter pistol. He checked the chamber for rounds, disengaged the safety and tucked the weapon into previously concealed shoulder holster. "Do we know what happened?"

Thompson shook his head. "Most of the details are sketchy as of right now, sir." The officer seemed to hesitate a second, and Xavier gathered that Thompson was trying to measure what he should say in front of him. "We do know that members of the Black population initiated the hostilities."

The warden asked for a map of this facility and one of the younger officers thought he remembered where one was. He returned to the office after leaving so quickly that it was difficult for the others to remember that he had exited at all.

"Where can I be of the most use right now, Thompson?"

"Their leader," Thompson handed a torn piece of paper with the inmate's name jotted down on it to the warden. "A Julian Moore is asking to meet with both of you on Alpha Wing."

The warden patted Rose Dixon's shoulder with his left hand. "Alright, you heard the man. Let's go, Rose."

"I'm sorry, sir," Thompson stepped into their path from exiting the room. "I probably didn't make Moore's instructions clear enough. The two of you that the prisoner was referring to was yourself and this inmate, Xavier Prince."

The warden cursed. Xavier would have sworn on a thousand Bibles that Donald Bright's skin lost one tone of color at that exact moment. Yet, the man recomposed himself and Xavier saw him working muttering something, working out a plan in his mind.

Warden Donald Bright shook his head, _no._

And Xavier noted another sense of déjà vu—as this scene played out eerily similar to his own moment of decision a few weeks back.

"You take three other guards and escort inmate Prince back to his cell." Bright pointed at the junior man, the one who had fetched the map and had returned to his office so swiftly.

The junior man whose name was Stuckey frowned in confusion. "Sir,"

"You men have your orders. Rose, you and Mr. Thomson are both with me."

"Yes, sir," The two said in chorus.

Two hours later, back in his cell, Xavier could hear many pairs of footsteps echoing against the stoned floor. He pulled an unlit Newport from his lips and planted a toothpick in his mouth instead.

Warden Donald Bright had come to _his_ office.

"Julian Moore and about three dozen other inmates, mostly former gang bangers from this group that called their selves the Black Knights, have barricaded themselves up inside Alpha Wing up on the third floor." It had only been a couple of hours since their meeting, but Warden Bright looked as if he hadn't slept in days. "They have managed to get their hands on a handful of civilians and are threating to kill them if I don't meet their demands." Warden Bright caught sight of Xavier's pack of smokes sitting in his shirt pocket, shook one of the Newport's loose and watched as Xavier lit the cigarette for him. Once again, Xavier was reminded that circumstance guaranteed that he could never call this man a friend, but he admired the collective way he carried himself. "Moore's still asking for you." The warden said after he exhaled his own long stream of smoke. "They are calling this their great campaign: A Riot's Last Gleaming or some bullshit like that." He shook his head dismayed. "I'm willing to provide you with any resource available to me, whatever you need to help free those captives up there."

Xavier grabbed the prison bars with all of his strength. "Take me to where Julian is, unbounded." Xavier said. The guards began to mouth a protest, Rose Dixon especially, but Warden bright pointed his cigarette at them with his left hand for silence. Xavier continued when the corridor had quieted enough to be heard. "I don't know what Julian and his Black Knights are up to, but I give you my word on my father's grave that I will not try to escape and I'll do whatever I can to help you resolve this."

Xavier Prince was unsure of whatever answers the immediate future held for him. A part of him wanted to pray, but he was unsure of the words that God wanted to hear. And he knew even _less_ what the dreams he'd been having of his father meant though he was sure they meant _something_ important was going to happen to him, and soon.

The one thing Xavier Prince _did_ know for a certainty is that when Officer Rose Dixon approached his cell with the keycard and he heard the bolt unlatch with an audible _click,_ he knew he had heard that revolting sound for the very last time. He could feel it in his marrow. He swallowed hard.

Xavier took his rightful place at the head of the pack, the warden struggling to match his purposeful stride. Rose Dixon hung several paces behind them, with intention, Xavier surmised. She wanted to guard Bright's life from any enemy that may threaten him. _Those threats include me, I suppose._

"You were scheduled for release in a day or so, Prince." Warden Bright doused the cigarette by stepping on it and caught back up with Xavier. "It looks as if that will be impossible now. Look, I'm not ignorant to what is going on upstate in Atlanta right now, The 411; I know how important it must be for you to get home to your city and to your sons." He paused until they turned the corner where the old timer's cell was. Prince wanted to stop and speak to the man one last time. "We're stealing more of your time. What can I offer you as compensation?"

Xavier halted his progress, turned and caught a whiff warden's dragon breath. "The damage has already been done. Atlanta will keep. And my son's understand their father's role in this life." He took a small step towards the other man. Out of the corner of his eye, Xavier could see Rose Dixon rest her hand on her nightstick once more. "That look of uncertainty and fear you are wearing on your face is providing me all the compensation that I'll ever need." And just like in the warden's office the two men stared at each other for a long time, until it was Warden Donald Bright who broke eye contact.

Xavier kneeled down to where the old man was usually seated on the floor in the cell nearest to him. He found him sleeping. He didn't want to disturb the old man, but Xavier was sure he would never pass this way again so he shook him at the shoulder...and then he shook him again. Slightly alarmed, Xavier Prince reached both of his hands through the bars and laid a hand on each side of his neck, measuring for a pulse.

But the old man was dead.

Xavier Prince lay the old man back down, eased his arms and hands from out of the prison bars, got to his feet and straightened his tunic before turning back to face the warden.

"After this is all over, I will pay for this man's funeral arrangements. There will be no cremation as mandated by this state for inmates who parish while incarcerated." Xavier said. "I'm holding you personally responsible that my wishes are met."

"I'll see to it."

Xavier twisted back around and began walking towards the stairs, towards his an uncertain _destiny_ and the others followed him in silence.

He didn't look back at his dead old friend.

Xavier Prince never could say goodbye.

#  Angel

**Fox Theatre (Peachtree Street Command) Midtown Atlanta, 3** rd **Day**

"Why in the hell is _he_ here?" Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree asked Agent Nicholas Sheridan of the man who exited the Chrysler with him a minute ago.

Justin Ryan:

He had grown a pot belly on an otherwise slim frame. He was shitfaced and wore too much moose in his hair, but Angel had to admit he was ruggedly handsome in his silky, black suit.

"Mr. Ryan happened to be on personal business up the street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Doctor," Sheridan shot her warning glance for her not to start, not here, not now. "Justin Ryan was The FBI's Chief Hostage Negotiator for many years and Deputy Director Rice asked to consult here, for him to be a part of this team, like he asked for _you_ to be a part of the team." He checked his Rolex. "In fact, the director himself should be arriving himself any minute now."

"Benny Stanton sent us a list with specific FBI personnel that he would not negotiate with. I'm not on this list; this man is at the top of it." Ryan had extended his hand to her, but she left it hanging there naked and exposed in the morning chill. _And if you saw how this man single handily cost lives at Waco you would see my point._

"Stanton _or no one else_ dictates terms here, Doctor." Angel was unsure whether Sheridan had raised his voice because to be heard over the circling helicopter flying into place, or to make his point of emphasis clear to her. He glanced at the Rolex again. "At first light, Stanton agreed to release several of the oldest women and youngest children in exchange for the talks beginning. Eight people have already walked out of that building alive. I call that progress, Doctor."

A strong gust of wind whipped through from Peachtree Street, the helicopters' blades making it all the worse. Angel hugged herself, pulled her hoodie back over her head and hugged her shoulders. "He agreed to those releases as an exercise in good faith, Agent Sheridan. He messaged us that he would begin talking _only_ after one of the individuals he asked for showed up. He's tied tongued, Sheridan. He's no dummy. This is sure to provoke him."

Angel was saved from another round of Sheridan's undressing as all three of them notice a black Chrysler swerving through the maze of idol police cruisers, government vehicles and barricades until its breaks squeal and two more men exit out each of the back seat doors and a young woman rose from the passenger side. A uniformed APD officer nodded at their questions and pointed them both in the vicinity where this party was bracing themselves against the biting cold.

Angel recognized the older of the two immediately, smiled when the other man's features became familiar to her, and pitched an educated guess to who the younger woman was.

Deputy Director Rice:

He was pale and thin and wore brown rimmed spectacles and reeked of coffee and cigarette smoke when he shook her hand and passed a container of coffee in her direction. He never took his eyes off of Angel as he shook both Sheridan and Ryan's hands and patted the latter man on the back with some affection. _You haven't changed a bit, have you, Ray._

Special Agent Romeo Kendall:

He was a panda shaped Black man with a slow right eye and a too lively twitch of his upper lip and he still was wearing a hairstyle better suited for the late 1980's. He'd been promoted to Commander of the Lead Rescue Team in the past six months, or so Angel's sources inside the bureau had told her.

Special Agent Tabitha Blue:

She was a skinny brunette in her early thirties with big ears sticking out from underneath the thin hair and she had a noticeable overbite. Angel smiled inwardly that Christopher's partner was the quintessential girl next door carrying a badge and a gun. Agent Blue referred to Angel as madam and extended her skeleton hand enough for the doctor to squeeze her fingers.

After introductions were made and the stressful reality of the moment engulfed her once more, Romeo's appearance in particular, caused Angel to reevaluate her surroundings. She'd been involved with enough of these scenarios, both in simulation and in the field, to readily identify what she was seeing. She heard another FBI copter arrive on the scene as she stole a sip of her copter, fighting the cold winds thrashed up because of the copter's blades.

She knew that each copter served its own unit of three or four agents in the copter itself and another six sharpshooters on the ground. Angel knew that the FBI liked to conduct operations in threes... _and over there, just past those pine trees,_ she saw yet another helicopter had been dispatched and was skimming over the horizon. So there were at least nine if not more sharpshooters sitting, almost invisible around the theater ready to strike when called upon.

In addition, if memory served her, there were Mobile Tactical Teams of Logistics, Intelligence, Communications, and Command Staffs making up the bulk of the personnel squeezing into a one mile radius surrounding the theater as well. _Serena, what web have you spun here?_ Angel had already worked out the theory that the siege part of Stanton's maneuver here at The Fox Theatre was of his own doing and ad live of the events of 411. _However many operatives you have with you, Serena fixed you with the task of indiscriminate killing of everyone inside and then you were supposed to get out._ If Stanton somehow managed to survive the next few days or hours in this standoff and extract what he wanted from the FBI, he was likely to die as Serena's hands for disobeying orders.

She burned Ryan with a look that would have warmed her coffee and cursed him in her mind. One screw up holding a gun and hostages inside didn't deserve another on the outside holding a bullhorn.

"Sheridan, listen." Angel grabbed him by the elbow, deciding that now was not an ideal time to breach protocol. _I will follow the chain of command._ She then shared with the group, through talking directly with Agent Sheridan, her theories about Stanton breaking ranks from Pandora and acting on his own.

"I don't totally disagree with your assessment, Doctor." Sheridan said. "That's Stanton's MO alright."

Chief negotiator Justin Ryan finally chimed in. "Is that your final professional analysis of this situation, _Doctor."_ He spat her title at her. "Or is that some type of psychological analysis of a situation that you have no technical expertise in. What I'm saying is perhaps this is evidence of you letting your emotional investment govern your thought process."

"No, Justin, that isn't evidence at all." She gave him the finger. " _This_ is."

Ryan snorted and through his hands up. " _Son of a bitch,"_ He said. _"_ Raymond, you actually keep people like this on the government's payroll."

The Deputy Director downed the last of his coffee and slapped Ryan on his shoulder again. "Calm down, Justin." He pointed his empty coffee cup at Angel. "And play nice, Doctor." He then pointed the coffee cup at Sheridan to give him the floor once more.

Sheridan cleared his throat and assumed command. "Each one of you is here because you bring a unique talent and area of expertise to this crisis. I'm going to need a mixture of these talents, expertise and experience to get us through this and ultimately save those people inside that theatre."

"That is what I'm trying to do." Angel said. "Forgive me, sir, but we all do remember a little historical blunder called Waco don't we?"

Sheridan said, "Doctor, please. I don't think we should—"

"And why shouldn't we?" Angel folded her arms, drawing her line in sand here and now. She put all of her focus on Ryan so there would be no mistake of who she was referring to. "This man was personally responsible for the firestorm that engulfed the Mount Carmel Center in Texas and the 70 some odd deaths of the Branch Dravidians that resulted from it."

Ryan tossed the last of his coffee from out of his cup into the breeze, pulled in his gut and bowed his narrow chest out. "Don't you dare lecture me on what you perceive you know, young lady. I have no regrets for the decisions I made that day. Every action I ordered served a greater peace, a greater security for the country I served and the country I still love."

"Peace?" Angel cocked a brow at the referenced word. "My father was on the ATF team that had been there for 51 days before the FBI allowed you to run the negotiations." She heard her voice soften. "My father wasn't a good man. He was a turd in fact, but he stayed behind for days after the siege ended and helped dig those people's carcasses out of that rubble. He took those singed images...and the smells of those babies, of your _peace,_ he found to his grave with him."

"Many lives were lost that day, that's true. I've never denied it. But my focus lies in the days and years that followed since that fateful day. I would give the order again today. I _will_ give the order again today. I will sacrifice every man, woman and child left inside that theatre if it gives some assurances that this situation doesn't happen again for another 15 or 20 years." Justin Ryan cursed aloud. "It means that I am doing my job."

"Hopefully, you will be dead long before an event happens like this again." Angel said and meant.

" _That's enough, both of you."_ Rice said in exasperation. He took a deep breath and swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and made contact with Romeo. "Are all of your people in place?"

"That's an affirmative." Romeo Kendall pulled out an architectural blueprint of The Fox Theatre and adjacent buildings and nearby streets. "We have snipers positioned here...here...and here. Their weapons are hot and they only await targets to fall into view and a go."

The smoky haze that had been an Atlanta trademark over the past few months blew in without little warning. The dry area stirred up a coughing fit from Romeo. He collected himself, said, "Two mobility units are stationed on the upper southeastern edge of the structure. They are lightly armed and as their name imply and are extremely mobile. They are moving into place and await further instructions as you and I speak, sir. Our three helicopters have jurisdiction over the skies for the mandated six miles out. No one will enter this zone. That means limited media coverage. That also means that if Stanton has some visual of what is going on out here, it won't be a panoramic enough view to give away our movements. Even if he has an escape route mapped out of this theatre of operations, pardon the pun, we will be able to pinch him and finally take him down."

The Deputy Director nodded, pleased. "Excellent work, all of you."

Angel felt a tingling in her neck, as if she'd been stuck by a bee signifying her defeat. She faced Ryan down. "So _what_ is your plan?"

"Bob Tate is speaking by phone right now with Stanton. He is acting as if he were leading the 'dummy' negotiations as that little shit inside that building wanted." Ryan spoke to the group. "In the meantime we're going to allow those inside a little downtime. Let Stanton bask in the glory of letting him believe he is in control here. Let's let him take a little breath while we let him gain a false sense of security. More importantly, we'll wait on darkness to fall over the city." He then, with a purpose, found Angel's eyes and took two steps towards her. "And then we're going to gas everyone inside, have Commander Kendall's people storm the building and take back what is ours."

Angel cursed. "You've got to be kidding me."

Ryan countered. "It's the only way to be sure."

Angel's big brown eyes pleaded with the group of five who had gathered on this chilly, smoky afternoon with her on Peachtree Street. "Does anyone else think this is a bad idea?"

When no one spoke up initially Angel snorted and kicked at a rock with her boot. Romeo Kendall searched the sky for guidance, found what he was looking for and spoke up. "The agents on the roof are scheduled to blow a hole in the theatre wall and pump sleeping gas to incapacitate the terrorist." He looked at her with his one good eye, but spoke loud enough for it to be intended for the group. "The gas is an odorless, invisible proxy we modeled after an ingredient we lifted off the Russians a few years ago." He squeezed Angel's shoulders with some affection. "It's a good plan, Angel. And it gets better." He released her and turned back to his superior, Deputy Director Rice and the others. "We are coordinating our efforts with a specialized force that have entered the sewers and narrow underground shafts and are setting up listening devices." It was time for Romeo to check his watch—or better yet a stopwatch. "In about an hour we'll have those systems online. We will be able to hear any and all conversations that are going on in there. More importantly, we will also have the ability to ascertain a better estimate to our enemy's exact numbers, the condition of the friendlies, and exactly where in the hell everyone inside is located."

Sheridan said, "There will most certainly be civilian casualties, Doctor. We've taken every necessary step to keep those numbers at a minimum."

"I know that you _believe_ that you have, Agent Sheridan." Angel said. _This is a damned foolish thing that you all are doing here, a damned foolish thing._ She tried another angle. "And what if they spoil your perfect little scenario and throw off your timing by not waiting through your downtime. What if Stanton loses his patients and starts killing people before dark."

"He won't." Justin Ryan said with an absolute certainty. "He could have killed every poor bastard in there and been on his way hours ago, before anyone arrived to stop him. The man _wants_ something. I know this. So do you. Another few hours is not going to make one helluva difference to him."

Angel let out a curt, maddening laugh. "This is insane."

"It is," Sheridan agreed and looked at Agent Blue, who looked as if she wanted to say something. "But it looks as if it is our best shot... if you have something constructive to add, Tabitha?"

"Respectfully, I do, sir." Agent Blue shifted in her stance. "We all believe my partner, Special Agent Christopher Prince, is amongst those being held inside. I believe that I've worked with the man long enough to know that he would be asking some of same questions that Doctor Hicks-Dupree is asking if he were out here with us. Are these risks we are all taking worth the price those inside may be asked to pay?"

Just as Angel breathed a sigh of relief for someone bringing sanity to the conversation she heard Justin Ryan answer for Sheridan. "They are, Agent Blue. Yet, the doctor's point is a good one. What if Stanton enacts some type of offensive before sunset? That's why we can't afford to waste any more time. Ray, I need to finalize a couple more details with Commander Kendall—"

"One last point," Angel waited for either Raymond Rice or Nicholas Sheridan to give her the slightest hint that she would be allowed to go on. The Deputy Director ran his fingers through his hair then glanced out of the corner of his eye, _one last point, Doctor,_ it seemed to say.

"I want each of you to think about the political ramifications of what you are proposing."

"I'll take that one, Doctor." The Deputy Director said. "The world and more importantly to me, the citizens of this city are watching every step of this process. As a governmental agency, we must strike at a subsidiary of Pandora with as much vehemence as we would if A House in Chains or the revival of The Black Panther Party, Branch Dravidians, or _any_ other extremist militant group would."

"And by definition, these people holding those captives inside are _our_ people." Agent Blue said with an air of venom that gave Angel another chill. "I've heard through the grapevine, that Stanton recruited women as pawns to help take this building. Many of these women went through the FBI Training Program with me. They are traitors to their country and to us as an agency. Ultimately, it should be up to people like _us_ to decide their fate."

"I understand that, Agent Blue. But what if the Black community," She corrected herself when Romeo flashed her one evil eye. "What if People of Color views the FBI's actions the opposite way of what your true intentions are?"

Sheridan cocked a bushy brow, appearing more fascinated than annoyed with her question. "How do you mean?"

"What if they view this as a hyper active action that disregards the lives of their citizens?" It was her turn to give Romeo a devilish look. "It is a group that looks out at the world and sees it undervaluing the lives of People of Color already. What if you all are all wrong, what if all of this planning is truly a grave mistake in judgment of our parts?"

Sheridan blew out a breath he'd been holding. "Then, we will have to live with it."

Justin Ryan nodded at Sheridan, then face downed his old friend Raymond Rice. "Ray?" He got The Deputy Director's attention. "I'll fall on the sword if this one blows up in our faces. All I need for you to do is sign off on granting Commander Kendall's men the right to use any necessary force he deems necessary. The public will learn only what we choose to disclose to them. Joe Citizen thinks he understands terminology like provocation, escalation, and prevention, terms that we work under everyday of our lives." He turned his full gaze on Angel. "They don't know a damned thing. That's why I am here young lady. I'm going to give our citizens a quick lesson in how to deal with extremism."

Angel ignored Ryan and turned her attention and focus on The Director of The FBI instead. "Christopher Prince is inside that theatre. I can feel it. He's more than just your federal agent. He's my friend. I don't want him to die."

Rice said, "He is all of that, Doctor. Special Agent Prince has served this agency with honor and distinction on more than one occasion. And though I don't know him personally, I hear from people like Sheridan and Blue here, that he is an even better man, which is obviously just as important. Still—he understands what he signed up for."

Sheridan allowed the silence to have its moment as a smoke filled wind shifted yet again. _Will this drought ever end plaguing Atlanta ever end?_ "Time is not our ally, sir. If you ae going to give Mr. Ryan and Commander Kendall their authorizations then the time is now."

Angel's head went on a swivel, intently watching all of those involved as a collective and eventually as individuals.

And then she only found eyes for the One.

The Deputy Director of The FBI opened his mouth and closed it again.

Sheridan said, "Sir?"

Justin Ryan said, "Ray?"

Raymond Rice looked as if all of his remaining years he had left on this planet had been sucked up into a vacuum and dumped into the look he had on this face when he finally to spoke aloud for all the others...and Angel specifically to hear."

"Do it," He said.

#  Chris

**Fox Theater (Central Concert Hall) 3** rd **Day**

They came for the hostages under the cover of darkness.

Special Agent Christopher Prince heard the FBI blow open holes in the ceiling twenty feet behind him. He felt the theatre tremble as another hole opened up in the distance to his far right. And finally, with a spectacular eruption of both light and sound within 20 feet of his line of sight, he received his final signal that the cavalry was seconds away from arrival.

One way or the other, the third day of The Siege of the Fox Theatre would be its last.

_We are on a stage here,_ thought Chris. _Shall we dance, ladies?_

Chris struck one of the women guards with a lethal chop at the nape of her neck when she was distracted by all of the commotion. Chris had never struck a woman before in his life, even while performing his duty, and for an odd instance in time the woman's collapse shook him. Even though that his very life may depended on his actions...and actions still to come, he realized that he'd crossed a threshold that he would never be able to return from.

Chris didn't let that fact hold him back.

A second guard had recovered from her initial surprise long enough to get her semiautomatic pointed in his general direction. He sprinted at full speed towards her, used his momentum to slide beneath where she was standing and snapped a bone in her left leg, while dislodging her firing weapon from her grip in one swift motion. He had kicked himself back on feet in a split second. He balanced his frame and the cursed added weight around his middle on one leg, while crushing the soft tissue around her throat with the other.

Chris bent over, winded and cursed himself for his damned gut slowing him down. _My lapses in discipline in maintaining healthy eating habits over that past few months may cost me_ everything _today._

Chris took a deep breath and got to his knees, semiautomatic in tow and nearly crawled from this room to the next as he caught the scent of tear gas that was beginning to sting his eyes. _The fountains,_ Chris stood erect, taking his chance with inhaling more teargas for the sanctuary of the fountains on the far side of this area. He washed his face while the water flowed over his baldness down into his shirt. _At least Luna Belle had enough decency to allow us all to redress after she'd discovered a dozen more of the hostages who had taken the mark and were segregated from the other People of Color._

Chris whipped his head around in time to see scores of Mobility Team members swinging in on ropes to the floor level. If these guys were the local unit, then they were Romeo Kendall's boys and he knew personally how damn well trained they were. He knew he was going to be in a tight spot trying to escape this place in one piece, but felt better in his gut that these men were going through the hellfire with him. _Bless you, Romeo._ He took a quick glance behind him. _I owe you one._

Kendall's unit was making relative short work of a half dozen female guards over by the East Wing. A couple of the desperate women even grabbed a hostage or two as a human shield, but Chris saw the sniper's red beams, death rays as bureau guys sometimes called them, light up an inch or two of the female's foreheads, as a deadly round of gunfire followed in haste. One hostage dropped with his kidnapper and Christopher's heart sank...only to watch the middle aged woman roll herself off of the dead Pandora Agent, and resumed running away, screaming.

_This wasn't supposed to be a prolonged event at all,_ Chris surmised, _watching the females being shot to death, one by one, soul by soul._ Stanton's people weren't inept; they were ill equipped to deal with a prolonged siege, or the probable federal incursion because of that siege.

_I don't need any more motivation to find and bring you to justice, Stanton._ He thought. _But your moronic thought process that brought this unnecessary loss of human life...this_ rapture, as Chris sometimes called it, _upon us all_ _makes you all the more expendable._

Special Agent Christopher Prince arrived near the booths that housed the ticket box office near the front entrance. What he saw there sickened him. He saw the first casualties of the siege three days earlier and the odor reeking from the bodies punched him the gut as well. At least ten People of Color had made a quick dash for this exit when Pandora's gunfire intentionally drove the herd of humanity in towards the dead end. The exits had already been chained and when the people had panicked after learning of it, they'd reversed course and ended up here, in this room. Stanton had the carcasses piled in an undignified matter, one on top the other.

The air around Chris grew thicker with tear gas. He could find no more water fountains or anything else for that matter, to shield his self against the fumes. Chris suffered through spells of choking and coughing that took turns gnawing at his ability to move or concentrate. Sporadic gunfire could still be heard from the other wings of the building. The cries coming from the mouths of the victims had elevated itself to being the most dominant— the most _tedious_ noise most of all. He held his weight up with one hand against a door's opening, while he used his other hand to cover his nose and mouth with a scarf he'd picked up off one of the dead bodies. _How many more will die tonight before this madness had run its course._

And then for the first time, since this rapture had begun, Chris wondered exactly where Luna Belle and Quincy Morgan were. Was the Sargent at Arms of a House in Chains and brother's third in command still alive or—

_Someone_ or _Something_ struck him over the back. The object, thankfully, turned out to be weighty and not sharp and didn't tear into his skin as well. He twisted his torso as quickly as the pain and his added weight allowed him to allow his vision quicker access to his attacker or attackers. _I can still dance with you, bastard._ Chris back hurt like hell. P _lease let it be only a single attacker,_ he prayed. Even in his weakened state he should at least be an equal for any of the female guards that may have survived the assault team's initial onslaught.

But Agent Christopher Prince's luck did not hold.

Benny Stanton had found _him_.

Chris searched high and low for the weapon that had been knocked away from his possession when Stanton had struck him in the back.

He rummaged in front and behind him for a possible retreat to allow himself a minute to inhale some clean oxygen through his lungs so it would flow up into his brain, so he could gather his thoughts and retool his strategy from retreating and surviving to how to launch an impressive counteroffensive.

He searched for a sign that he would receive absolution from all of his past sins.

All he found was that Benny Stanton had killed a Mobility Team member and was wearing his head gear, which insulated the other man's lungs from the poison of the tear gas. Stanton would enjoy having enhanced vison thanks to the Virtual Vision Technology installed in each of those helmets as well. _And my predicament on gets worse from here,_ he crouched into combat position, _he's in ex ATF Operative, meaning he's received at least the same amount of combat training that I have._ And worse of all, the bastard was in shape and wasn't carrying around a spare tire around his middle.

With the odds weighed against him, Christopher Prince stepped on the dance floor first, hurling himself at Stanton. _That was a bad move._ Stanton used Chris' own momentum to throw him against a row of chairs to the near side of the ticket concession stands. It didn't take rocket science, or his personal doctor, for Chris to instantly know that his already aching back had been damaged further. There was a tingling sensation in the thigh areas of his right leg that was nothing to write home about either.

" _Piss on you_ ," He screamed at Stanton.

"I'm going to kill _choo."_ Stanton replied back.

"Why don't you come over here and let me untie that twisted tongue of yours, Stanton." Chris picked himself off of the floor. "I'll be happy to do it for _choo."_

Mocking Stanton had at least succeeded in angering Stanton to the point of the other falling into stupid mode. He pulled the helmet aside and threw it at Chris, who easily side stepped it. Stanton dove at him with an attack that was partly clumsy, partly stiff.

Chris sprinted at Stanton and made his second attempt at a slide and tackle that had worked successfully on one of the female attackers a few minutes earlier. Stanton didn't leave his leg as exposed and vulnerable as the woman did...and the other man tried to counteract Chris move with a slide tackle move of his own.

Chris won the war of attrition. He got to his feet faster than either man would have thought humanly possible. He used Stanton's frame for partial balance and unleashed a left jab and then right cross that returned the tactical advantage back to Chris...at least for the moment.

Whether it was from Chris' punches or tear gas beginning to wear on him, Stanton withered more quickly than the special agent might have hoped or prayed for. _This had better work, our song is nearly done._ Chris called up the last of his energy reserves and let a series of lefts and rights that found their targets on Stanton's cheeks, jaws, lips, eyes, and nose.

And then Chris spun in a 180 degree circle and unleashed a judo kick maneuver he'd saved for last.

And the dance, at last, was at an end.

Chris didn't get to enjoy the fruits of his labor, however. He collapsed on top of Benny Stanton. He fought off unconsciousness with every fiber of his being, as he had fought for his life since the sun had set in Atlanta's evening sky.

He fought off the memories of being taken by Louis Keaton all of those years ago.

Chris cried. He lost all control of his muscles. He threw up. _Well...at least...my back...has...stopped hurting..._

And yet his eyes focused long enough to see Quincy Morgan.

The unmistakable silhouette of the member of The Circle walked with some urgency over on the Westside of the room. _Or are my eyes...or mind...playing tricks on...me._ A second figure slowly came into full focus, one that was even more slender and far more feminine than the first one. It was Luna Belle. He was certain of it. _Unless you two...have joined me...in eternity,_ he thought.

Belle had a long butcher knife in her hand and repeatedly tried to stab Morgan with it. She swiped at his sternum, at his face, and finally at his throat. As he dodged each blow his grin he was wearing on hip lips only widened. He possessed no weapon of his own, except his own extremities of long legs and arms, but he seemed content to prolong his own dance a while longer.

Belle gritted her teeth and left her feet as she pushed at an area she'd targeted between his eyes with all of her strength...and failed.

Morgan had knocked the knife harmlessly to the floor.

And what...will...you do with your...victory, Quincy?

Morgan had lost his smile and mouthed something that Chris could only dream to articulate considering this distance...and his worsening condition.

Morgan glanced in _his_ direction for a single moment in time, then moved with quickness and agility of a born acrobat, flipped behind Belle, landed at her heels, grasp her slender neck with his left hand and snapped bone after bone in it with his right.

Luna Bell's body collapsed.

Quincy Morgan glanced in his direction one final time.

And then Christopher Prince saw angels.

And then he saw at least _one_ Angel.

"Christopher. _Christopher."_ The Angel he'd know so very long was speaking, her big brown eyes nearly tearing up. _"Thank, God, you're alive! You are alive."_

And he believed it for certain when the spasms of coughing and choking worked him over again. _Don't complain, Chris, it could have been far worse._ In addition to his back being sore as hell, his legs, side and his chest were burning as well.

A medical team full of faces he recognized moved him further away from the theatre out into the open air. He reasoned that it was the only way he could have made it there. "What are you doing here?" He smiled, thankful for gift of painless lip and mouth. "And what have you screwed up this time?"

Chris best friend in the entire world laughed in spite of herself. And fresh tears threatened to fall from her eyes. Through all that the woman had been through, he'd never seen her cry before.

"I haven't gotten into trouble yet," She rubbed his cheek. "But the night is still young and so am I."

Chris caught her hand and gave it a couple of long squeezes. She must have noted the seriousness etched in his face, the agent in him filtering through, so she gaves him the edited version of this genesis of this operation that had extracted him and the hostages from The Fox Theatre. She told him how Romeo Kendall's plan evolved from the way the FBI initially conceived it. Agent Nicholas Sheridan, in the overseer over field operations, thought that using the specialized gas they'd taken from the Russians probably was a dangerous overreach. _For that plan to have worked, everyone and I do mean everyone would have had to unconscious at the same time,_ or Chris realized that any captor remaining conscious would have panicked and started killing hostages as a preemptive measure for a likely incursion from FBI and ATF agents.

Out of the corner of his eye Chris saw his partner Tabitha Blue approaching. She halted her progress at a respectful distance, stuck her hands in her pockets and allowed the two friends to complete any private conversations they were having, _Blue being Blue,_ he used some of his reserve strength to beckon her closer.

"You are a sight for sore eyes, Tabitha."

She kneeled next to him. "I'm glad to see you made it, partner."

Chris knew this personal exchange was Blue's equivalent of crying. If Angel had a tough exterior then Blue was made of steel. No matter how many more years they might work together he doubted he'd ever break through to see what feelings Tabitha Blue might have buried on the other side and that was fine by him. Though he suspected that his partner looked at the FBI like her family, and took the desertions into Pandora personally

"So this was all Justin Ryan's master plan, huh?" Chris asked. "He's a son of a bitch alright. I can just imagine he and the good old doctor got along just fine, while I was busy right, Blue?"

Blue flashed her overbite and nodded. "Perfectly,"

"Tell me you didn't try to intimate him, Doc?"

Angel matched Blue with a smile of her own. "Yeah, well, someone had to keep him straight."

"Waste of time, Doc," Chris took a deep breath and tried to mask the pain he was feeling from two very important women in his life. "Don't you know you can't intimidate a man who has raised seven daughters?" He said as his memory continued to unclog he asked, "I had one helluva run in with Stanton, did he—"

"Well, that explains all the bruises on this face. Anyway, he's dead." Blue said without emotion. "Somehow he survived his fight with you long enough to pick himself up and shot right between the eyes by one of the Mobile Team members."

_But how could have that happened?_ Stanton had been unconscious just as Chris had been. Federal training or not, Biology is biology, so he couldn't have recovered fast enough to become a menace again. _And if Stanton had gained consciousness even for a few minutes, he would have finished me off._

What?" Blue wanted to know. "You look as if you've seen a ghost or something, Chris."

"Yeah, something to that effect," He said. Then he shook his head to get the cobwebs out. "Luna Belle was his second in command. Have the medics recovered—"

This time it was Angel's turn to nod. "Yea, they've recovered something alright. The medical examiner is unclear yet on how she broke her neck but she had a bullet hole in her forehead as well."

He wanted to know if what he'd seen had been accurate. _I'm not going to put my voice to any_ official _report about the last moments in there until I'm clearer about what I saw._

Suddenly exhausted, Chris turned away from both women as if the conversation has zapped away the last of his strength, which in truth, it had.

And then he saw body bags.

He saw piles and piles of body bags.

"How many," He asked without turning back to face them. He knew that Catherine, the woman of Indian descent who had been his date, who he was responsible for protecting, was one of those lying dead in one of those body bags. And he couldn't even supply the medics her damned last name.

Blue Answered. "At least 18 confirmed civilian casualties, but expect that number to grow in the coming days by at least another handful. If you count both Stanton and Belle, then 14 Pandora agents also perished, while I know personally that two of Commander's Kendall's men bought it as well, while a third clings by a thread as we speak."

Damn.

The human part of him...the part that defied death, at least for another day, selfishly turned his thoughts away from the dead and dying to his own little world. Chris had to admit he was looking to getting home to his condo for a warm shower and a meal after a debriefing from Sheridan and a mandatory visit to a company doctor.

And yet, he felt the need to answer some of the unanswerable questions, especially before he made any official statements to Sheridan. What really happened to Benny Stanton and Luna Belle? Was he dreaming or hallucinating when he saw Quincy Morgan kill Luna Belle, did the man have something to do with shooting either one of them? For now, at least, he was forced to swallow those questions, especially in front of his partner, Tabitha Blue.

Chris personal cell phone buzzed. _What? How and when did I get my phone back?_ Cell phones and any and all other means of communication were taken by Stanton's people as soon they had secured the theatre as their very own. His screen was telling him that he had multiple messages awaiting his password to retrieve them.

_I'll add this to the list of mysteries I have to solve,_ he thought. And as thrilled as he as that he had recovered his personal cell phone, he hated loose ends even more passionately. Wincing in pain, he lay flat on his back and handed his phone to Angel and gave her the ten word password that put a smile on her thick lips.

"It's wonderful that even after all these years, that you still honor your father's memory."

"Yea," He said looking for a quick change of subject. "Angel, scroll back at far as you can to see who left the last message or two."

"Sure." She did as he had asked her, then handed the phone back to him without reading the actually message itself."

He read three messages; two were from his personal doctor, who he had missed the follow up with today with the message saying that it was vital that he spoke with him at Chris' earliest convenience.

And yet it was the latest text, sent nearly 24 hours ago, that parted Special Agent Christopher Princes' lips into a visible O and rewarded him with a new pain in his gut and around hit heart. This evenings plans of returning to his condo for a shower and meal would need to be on hold, as well at visit to the company doctor... and even Sheridan's debriefing would have to be rescheduled.

The message said:

" _On the day that you escape The Fox Theatre Siege, meet me at 2:00 AM in Piedmont Park. Come alone. Your prudency and cooperation are appreciated in this manner. And your stepdaughter's life may depend on it."_

FBI Special Agent Christopher Prince searched for a sign that he would receive absolution for all of his past sins.

After he read the text again, he now wondered if that sign would ever come.
Episode 2 Deliverance

Chapter Four

SHOOTER: I have an unobstructed visual of contact. I am awaiting the authorization to terminate contact.

COMMAND: Negative, Shooter. Hold your fire. I say again that you are to hold.

SHOOTER: Contact is moving expeditiously. She will be out of my range in 8...7...6...

COMMAND: Shooter, you are to hold, damn you...Alright. We have been given the authorization for immediate termination of Contact. Kill her now.

SHOOTER: You re authentic authorization has been received and acknowledged. The termination of Contact is commencing—

-Danielle Rohm speaking with an unidentified Pandora Agent on a secured wireless transmission on April 3
Roxanne

**Piedmont Park; Midtown Atlanta, 4** th **Day**

Using the cover of darkness, she could have killed Special Agent Christopher Prince when he entered Piedmont Park from the south entrance without scanning the shadowed area off and to the right of him, or when he failed to glance in the silhouetted spectrum of corridors above his head when he passed under the water slide, or when he walked too close to peach trees boarding the skating rink.

He appeared to be alert, especially considering it was 1:00 am and the hell the man had suffered through over the past 36 hours. In fact, other than favoring his lower back when he walked, Roxanne Sanchez thought that Chris looked no worse for the wear, at least on the surface. Still, she needed him to be sharp both mentally and physically, with the new horrors she was introducing into his life.

She had sent him a series of texts after she was certain that he had finally opened the first one and he had followed her instructions to the letter: _Come alone. After you pass underneath the standing area beneath the skating rink, wait ten minutes, and approach the kiddies' playgrounds from over by the bicycle trails. Sit in the swing that is farthest to the right. This will position you in a wide open space and protects both of us from ambush. I will approach you from the merry go round. Do not get up from the swing. Do not attempt to call me._

Roxanne Sanchez:

She was a coffee-colored, shapely Latino in her mid-thirties. She had dark shoulder length hair and dark eyes, a crooked nose and black lips stick on thin lips that curse words seemed to flow from between them far too often. Or so her mother had said. She'd paid too much for her body spray, her selection of panties was too risqué, her boots too long and her slacks hugged her hips far too tightly. Roxanne knew this and didn't give a damn what anyone thought of her or her choice of attire.

She used a long fingernail of her index finger to chip away at the bark from a tree trunk, while she stole a panoramic view of the entire park. Piedmont had been grand enough to host an Olympic celebration all those years ago, and yet had remained small enough to retain a good measure of its intimacy. Mayor Ernestine Johnson had been the latest of Atlanta's Mayors to use tax revenue to refurbish most of the picnic areas, plant new trees and spice up the other shrubbery, and extend three of the walking and bike trails.

And now the mayor was dead.

Two men were out for a late night jog in the murky air. _How are you two standing to_ _breathe this air?_ They seemed to circle back towards her and she lifted the cell out of her back pocket with one hand to check the time. It read 12:45 am back at her. She rested her other hand on her gun that was sitting in the holster inside her jean jacket. _Don't corner me_ ; she silently spat the words at them. _If I'm enough of a monster to place this steel at the temple of two innocent_ _little girls and threaten to kill them both, then what would I do to you two?_

When Roxanne left the bureau training program for her gig in private investigations, she first took on work where she could get it: She found an unfaithful husband in Albany, uncovered how a shady business was cheating its customers in Montgomery, and investigated faulty disability claims all over Louisiana, while brokering her services for one of the state's most prestigious insurance companies. As both her reputation and bank account grew she ventured further away from her childhood home of Atlanta.

Six months later Roxanne finally settled in one of the small border towns near El Paso, Texas, doing some missing person' s investigations on both sides of The Rio Grande. Most of these were simple runways cases.

She began working with a Mexican Police Chief after a couple more months, sharing professional duties during the day...and falling in bed with him during the night.

Victor Castillo:

He was a 35 year old brown skinned man. He had a slim but muscular torso, a bald head and spoke with a deep, raspy voice. Roxanne found him to be the ultimate study in contrast...the moon and the sun, the squall and the tranquil... the darkness and the light. He and his partner Gonzales fought injustice, or at least their vision of it, with a steel hand of viciousness and ruthlessness that almost...frightened her.

Yet, he could be so very tender when he touched her. She told herself that she didn't love him. She didn't need his love. Those feelings were left reserved for a man back home that she could never have. Victor, however, was a man cursed with vices: He liquored up too much, puffed like a chimney on his Cuban cigars and gambled at craps and poker and roulette. Vices had destroyed Roxanne's father and her only sister. _No_ , she reminded herself, _Rachel's addictions ruined her life for sure, but it was Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree killed her_. She had vowed to never forget the woman's role in Rachel's demise.

And someday Roxanne Sanchez would make the good doctor pay for her sins against her family.

As for Victor, Roxanne had been content with his company, his silly serenades in her ear as they showered, his rock hard abs, and the way he held her lower back in place when he _cojamosed_ her from behind. One night, after a particularly intense session of lovemaking she noted the look in his dark eyes that told her that he'd crossed his own private border, although his pride did not allow him to verbalize it to her. He did say in that raspy voice: I know that you _are a big girl, Senorita, but always watch your back when you are down here_ — _down below._ _Never allow yourself to dip in Cartel business. Ever. You Americans think you understand them, but you don't. You think the cartels are about weapons and drugs or money. They are about property. The cartels are not satisfied until they own your body, your soul; they want to own all of you._

She rolled on top of him and showed appreciation for his concern for the rest of the night until she serenaded him with moans of her orgasm.

For 30 more days her days were productive and profitable and her nights for a passion and pleasure.

On the 31st day she met a man who would change her life forever.

Julio Vargas:

He was a pie faced, pallid colored Mexican man who wore a toupee to cover his naked scalp, a thick moustache covered his top lip, and he looked as if he had been well fed to this point of his middle aged life.

He sat on his lush couch and told Roxanne that one of local cartels had kidnapped his two oldest daughters who were only 14 and 12 years old. Vargas' wife gnawed at her fingernail and burst into tears when her husband had mentioned the girls ages.

Lying in bed together later that night, Victor told her that by now the girls had been repeatedly raped and even worse had been branded with the cartel seal on the nape of their necks. _Vargas fronts as a small time business man but behind the scenes he's a hood who deals guns for the cartels. He's not very good at either one. And his accountant is a moron. He'd gotten pretty deep in the red for them to take the females though_. Victor had told her. _Still, Vargas served as_ _an unofficial mayor of a small village of about 50 families or so just west of where they were now. They call it the Hill. Those villagers depended on Vargas to maintain peace with the cartels._ He finished by telling her that whoever the cartels regional leader was he considered the debt paid in full now. Victor had gotten to his feet then, his vice of Bourbon calling him from her bed. _The girls are property now, Senorita_ , he had said as if the manner was a matter of fact and nothing else. This man who Roxanne had given herself to could be a study of contrast, of darkness and light. _Vargas only called on you to save face in front of his wife for his screw up._ _He can't take his girls back even if he wanted to. Besides_...he had turned and became one with the shadows, but his voice rasped the truth out at her... _he still has three other daughters left_.

So Roxanne poked her head in a few doors for a few days and knocked on a few more doors, to contribute to the game Vargas was playing with wife—or so she told Victor.

In actually, she was twisting arms and bashing skulls in the way that her lover had shown her over her tenure down here.

Roxanne should have heeded Victor's warning.

She found the girls. And within an hour or so of their discovery she'd snuck them off of the compound without setting off an alarm or firing a shot. She brought the girls back to Vargas at his home, his wife running as fast as her weight allowed her to greet her children in the foyer. Two of Vargas' men wrestled Mrs. Vargas to the ground before she could touch their faces. Roxanne heard the woman's shoulder pop when her arm hit the tiled floor.

Vargas stood motionless. He looked surprised. The surprise bled into a pained expression. The pained expression died a fast death and anger replaced it.

_This is cartel property_. He had pointed a fat finger, one for each daughter. _Take them_ back _from where you found them_.

Mrs. Vargas' grief took her back to the tile as she screamed for all who were the house to know her displeasure, to share a mother's misery.

When Roxanne didn't immediately move, Vargas' men stepped in the girls directions to follow his instructions themselves.

That is when Roxanne had put her gun to the temple of the oldest girl and pressed the head of the other so tightly against the first, that when she squeezed a round off the younger girl would likely share her sister's fate.

_You know not what you do here_. Tears had dropped from Vargas' eyes where they had been absent when he told Roxanne of these same girls' abductions days earlier. _They are the_ _cartel's property. You do not damage cartel property_. And then he added: _I have three other_ _daughters_.

She backed out of Vargas' residence...and out the country without another word and stuck the girls with a family in a remote corner of the world where they would never be found.

24 hours after she left Vargas the cartel's incursion into the Hill began. Those 50 families or so were slaughtered and the Hill was burned to the ground.

Roxanne Sanchez never saw Victor Castillo, or heard his silly serenades in her ear or any of the rest ever again.

He did send her a text in the same manner that she'd sent Christopher Prince earlier tonight. It said:

You did not heed my words, Senorita. You dipped your hands in cartel business. Someday, when the time is right, Gonzales and I will stop what we are doing here...and find you.

I will see you suffer for what you have done here down below.

I will see you suffer before your end.

The two men had jogged past her without incident. She noticed sweat on her brow even though the night was cool and crisp. She pulled her cell out of her back pocket and it said 1:00 AM. She got her boots beneath her and walked towards the swings where Chris was seated.

"Sanchez?" Chris said and it warmed her heart that he would remember her face so quickly. It had been 6 years now. "Roxanne Sanchez, my God, is that you?"

"It is, Chris." He stood up from the swing and found his footing in the loose sand. "How are you?"

He nodded his bald head once, made a quick sweep of the park with his eyes and then settled his focus back on her. "I'm good, or at least I thought I was. Look, our line of work has taught me not to believe in coincidences. I've been casing this park for the better part of 45 minutes. It's 1:00 AM in the morning. Except for those two men I saw jog past you a few minutes ago, there isn't anyone else here." She watched his gaze turn serious, his opaque skin beautiful in the full moon's light. "It was you who have been sending me the text messages. It was you who asked me here. What in the hell is going on here, Roxanne? What is the meaning of all this and what does it has to do with my step daughter?"

Roxanne pulled her hoodie up over her ears and stepped closer to him. She needed to gage his reactions to the news she was about to tell him about. _Never again will I allow lives to_ _be lost because I failed to judge people correctly._ "Chris, your step daughter is missing?"

"Erica? And when did this happen?" He rubbed at his nose and mouth and she heard him whistle. "And if this is true at all, how did you become involved?"

She didn't blink. "Your ex-wife hired me about two weeks ago."

"Denise hired you a couple of weeks ago, that means that Erica has supposedly been missing even longer than that." Even in the faint light, Roxanne could see his naked brow curl in hurt and anger. "And I'm just hearing about this tonight. Yea," He nodded. "This would be very typical of how my ex-wife conducts her business."

Roxanne let Chris stew in his anger for a minute or two. The night's air had grown thick with smoke. Most of it, she figured, blew in from the brushfires that had plagued Atlanta's metro area during the year long drought. A drought she knew, that had until the last 36 hours, had dominated the local news scene. Yet, at least a portion of haze was the gift of the explosion that had occurred originally at The Andrew Young Center three days ago. The fires had spread to the shotgun houses that sat adjacent to the center, but the dry conditions and the loose brush milling about, had caused an entire block or two to go up in smoke. Local firefighters told reporters that they had never seen anything like the conditions plaguing the city.

"Denise hesitated to involve you at all, Chris." Roxanne said, remembering that fact alone tied knots in her belly. "She wouldn't elaborate on what circumstances would cause her to think like that. Denise only told me that there had been some... _difficulties_ in the relationship between the three of you. I finally convinced her that you needed to know what was going on. After all, you had helped raise Erica. You are her father, even if raw biology says otherwise. Despite any difficulties that you three might have struggled through, you had the right to know that she's come up missing."

Chris rubbed at his smooth chin, working something out in his mind. "You say that Denise hired you two weeks ago. How long did she think Erica was missing before that?"

"The official APD reports state that she went missing on or about the 10th of March."

"Did anyone say where she was last seen?"

The born investigator in Chris had taken hold. _Good, you are still sharp indeed._ "The few people that I got to talk to me said she'd been hanging out with some of her friends in and around neighborhoods in College Park." Chris flashed an unsettling look. "And if you don't mind me asking this, you give me the impression that you don't truly believe that this young woman is missing?"

He exhaled a deep breath he'd been holding. "Erica is 20 years old and she's been doing this kind of thing almost half her life. She first started ditching school at 12. And that was just a start of a laundry list of issues she's put her mother and I through."

"Word on the street is that trouble often found her?"

"Especially when you meet if half way," Chris said nodding. He parked himself in a swing and took another deep breath. Roxanne watched his face light up for a second. Something about this swing brought a pleasant memory up to the surface of Chris' mind. "Did Denise talk to you about Erica, I mean on a more personal level?"

Roxanne sat in the swing next to him. "No, not really," She said. "She gave me some names, you know a list of family members and friends that she liked to hang out with. She echoed the sentiment that I heard in the street, that trouble could find Erica, but she didn't elaborate beyond that point."

Chris looked over at her and the skin around his brow curled as if he'd made his mind up about sharing something important with her. "Like I said earlier, Erica first ditched school at 12 years old. The school gave Denise a call. We went looking for her. We found her a few blocks from the house...giving oral sex to this older kid, a 15 year old in the back of a parked car."

"Whoa."

"I wish I could say these types of incidents were isolated and that this type of behavior ended there. By the time Erica herself had reached 15 years old, she'd served two separate stints at the local juvenile detention center. She served once for a string of petty theft charges and she did a stretch for violence against another female minor with a knife."

"What about running away?"

"She'd do the teenaged thing; get pissed about something or the other, and hall ass for a day two and show back up at our house when she got hungry or one of her so called friends grew tired of her act and he company." He said. "Four days is the longest stretch that I can remember her disappearing without us hearing a single word. So when you ask me if I'm surprised that she's come up missing again, then I guess my answer would have to stand at no, I'm not surprised with anything that Erica gets herself into."

"Are you worried about her?'

Chris considered her question a moment. "Yea...maybe a little," He got up out of the swing and began walking towards one of the trails, downwind of the smoke. "Look, I know how my reaction may all appear to an outsider." _You don't know a damned thing_ ; Roxanne thought, the image of Vargas, his screaming wife, and those precious girls buried inside her head, but let Chris go on nonetheless.

"Every family has issues, Roxanne. But those difficulties, as Denise stated to you, cut far deeper than a half dozen families endure. When the three of us were together, especially the last year or two my marriage, we defined what a dysfunctional family meant."

_I know about dysfunctional families as well, Chris_. And she was thinking about her own family, not the ones that she had interfered with across the border. This wasn't the time to dwell on her mother and sister right now, though. She needed to focus her energy and thoughts on the case at hand. "I see." She stopped walking and turned to face him. He had gained a little weight around his middle, but he was still a handsome man. "Before we go on about Erica, are you okay?" She wasn't showing any real weakness by simply asking. It was simple courtesy, nothing more. "You know...after what happened to you over the past several days?"

"I'm good, Roxanne." He smiled at her and something inside her melted as it always had before. "You haven't changed. I wondered what became of you after you left the academy."

"Yea," She smiled back. "I've moved around a bit. I've seen a lot of the country. I went and did my own thing. I've been doing professional investigative work ever since." The hard lessons she learned in Mexico doused her smile just as quick. If Chris wondered why her faced changed so quickly he did not bother to ask.

"Professional investigator, I like the term, though I don't think I've ever heard anyone use it in that manner before. Good for you, Roxanne."

"Thanks. And the road from falling out of the FBI's academy to all of this wasn't as narrow as you think."

Prince nodded at that. "It never is." She saw something stir in his face, stood in silence and let it flow. "During my marriage with Denise, Erica and I were never close. Like I said before, she's pulled disappearing acts before. She's also grown and not responsible for letting Denise or anyone else knows her every movement. I haven't spoken to Erica in months. I've had a lot on my plate." The FBI Special Agent peered out over the horizon to the space where The Andrew Young Center once stood. "And after 411, I expect this plate to only grow with responsibility."

"I know that."

"What you don't know, Roxanne, if that the relationship between my ex-wife, my step daughter and me goes well past the point of dysfunction. It goes past the point of toxic. That's all that I can say about it for now."

An awkward silence fell over them before Chris broke in again. "You have my number; I expect daily reports on your findings."

"I will."

Christopher Prince put his hands in his jacket pockets, turned again towards the heart of the city, glared at the moonlight, and then turned his clean shaven head back towards her as he stepped closer.

"Roxanne, I'm holding you personally responsible for bringing Erica back to her mother—whether she is alive or not. Erica is her only child, her baby. And every mother should know whether their baby is alive or not."

_I know that truth all too well._ Roxanne stood there a moment longer and gazed into his eyes, searching for what exactly, she could not say. She finally heard herself saying, "That is how it should be."

Prince's cell phone interrupted the silence that occurred between them afterwards. He excused himself, didn't seem to recognize the number at first glance, and then stepped over to the side to take the call, then made his way back over to her at last five minutes later.

"You kept texting me," He continued on as if the conversation they were having before had never been interrupted. "I never responded to any of your first half dozen texts. After some time you must have realized I was involved in 411 in some capacity."

"Yea, I knew about the 411 and I was aware about the siege specifically. And I knew you had a date and tickets to the show."

The look on his face said that he recognized she was an investigator, but he was unsure whether he'd appreciated her keeping tabs on him. Instead he asked, "After the carnage of the first night, how did you know that I was still alive?"

The monster that raged inside Roxanne Sanchez— that allowed her to escape her own siege at Vargas' home shrugged into the early morning darkness, "We're survivors, Chris," She finally said. "You and I both know how to survive."

_Though I've survived by being a monster, Chris; how can anyone ever love a monster_?
Thomas

**Dunwoody, DeKalb County, 4** th **Day**

He went to slide the key into lock on the front entrance to his townhome in Upper Dunwoody—

The door was already unlocked and opened slightly.

Fighting back panic, Thomas decided against calling 911 from the cell phone in his hand—at least not yet, and peered inside.

He took as small of a step as a man his size could manage and opened the door the entire way. He was unarmed. He only owned one weapon and knew he would never reach it in his bedroom, if a prowler was somewhere in the living quarters between here and there—

"Hello, Thomas." Serena Tennyson, leader of Pandora, was sitting on the edge of an easy chair that Thomas often dozed in after a long day of writing or interviewing. She was wearing a dark blue pants suit with her feet planted firmly on his hardwood floor. The suit highlighted the rich texture of her red hair. "Hopefully you will remember who I am. I don't want to waste the little time we have together with us having to reintroduce—"

"I know who you are." Thomas slid along his front door to an adjacent wall, sweating worse now that he knew who had invaded his home.

He'd just made it home from a particularly raunchy session with a woman named Darcy. They'd spent half the night together when her husband had surprised them both by taking an earlier flight and returning to their suburban Atlanta home nearly a day sooner than he was expected. Thomas had to squeeze his large frame into the couple's walk in closet and stayed there until the man had fallen asleep, nearly an hour later, and only then was allowed to escape into the Escalade that experience had long taught him to park smartly a couple of houses down the street.

He hadn't had the chance to shower, and he was sure that Darcy's scent was all over him, especially with the perspiration pouring from underneath his armpits with this discovery. "I know what you are capable of? The whole world has been reminded over that past few days, what you are capable of, Serena."

"Then my appearance here shouldn't come as a real shock to you, Thomas." She swallowed a mouthful of bottled water that she'd brought with her. Other than a case of beer, Thomas was sure there was very little to drink in the fridge. She was sitting perfectly still. "Try to relax, Thomas. Breathe. The first thing I need you to do is to assure me that you won't do anything volatile. I can guarantee your safety during the duration of my visit only if you promise not to dial 911 or try to leave this place until we are finished with our business."

Thomas found a spot in front of his bar and halted his motion there, his pulse racing in his ears with a new thought. _If you help me, you will gain enemies on both sides of this conflict_. Mayor Ernestine Johnson had said in her last breaths before she died. _They both will harass you._ _They will threaten you. They may even kill you. Yes, Thomas, they may try and kill you."_

"You, of all the people in the world, are going to guarantee my safety, huh?" Thomas snorted and then pointed at her. "Right now, lady, you are the most hunted woman who ever lived. I'm standing her in the same room with you. How safe can I actually be?"

Serena sat back in his chair a moment. "I guess we will see."

Thomas' heavy breathing slowly subsided, oxygen beginning to feed his starving brain allowing him to regain some his wits... and then a revelation. "Sophie?" He began to scanning the hard wood floors and moving the couch, coffee table, bookcase, and stereo player aside in frantic search for his pet. "Sophie?" He called again, growing distraught that she would ever answer his call again. "What have you people done with my dog?"

"That... _thing_ is being kept at a nearby kennel." Thomas could see the distaste written as Serena's thin top lip lifted into a sneer. "It is being detained there, but otherwise is not being mistreated."

" _She_ ," Thomas said. "Her name is Sophie. She is a living, breathing animal with feelings."

"Whatever." Serena sat erect again, as if her real discomfort came from any relaxation that the chair may have provided her. "I would advise you to be more immediately concerned with your own health and well-being." She paused to allow him to swallow that dose of reality. "If we have an agreement, then please sit down. We have much to discuss and we've wasted enough time as it is."

Standing on these hard wood floors for long periods of time had recently started his lower back and feet to ache. He put one hand on his side and continued to stand despite his discomforts. "What could you possibly want from me, Serena?"

"I've had you followed. I know that you spoke candidly with Mayor Ernestine Johnson before her passing."

"Ernestine who,"

"Don't fuck with me, Thomas." Serena stood. She drained the last ounces out of her water bottle, walked over and dropped the empty plastic into the recycle bin, retrieved another from a pack she brought with her. "I'm sure you and the city's former mayor spoke at length on several matters, including the three questions that every Person of Color wants to know?"

Thomas laughed, a sickly sound that he hoped drowned out all of the anxiety and fear he was actually feeling at the moment. _Yes, Thomas, they may even try to kill you_. They might at that, but he had made a promise to the dying woman. He tried to push the conversation in a different direction. "So if I'm guessing correctly, you are here to use me as a propaganda tool in denying portions of what has transpired in this city over the past 36 hours?"

"You have it backwards actually," She sipped at her water bottle, looking as if she were savoring its taste. "And I'll let you get away with changing the subject only long enough to verify that Pandora, under my orders, did launch all three attacks that the world has come to know as 411, as these operations began on April 1, 2011."

"Why do you need me to confirm this for you, Serena?" Thomas asked. "Through whatever channels you chose to use, your people already established that you perpetrated these offensives to the media."

"You've been an esteemed journalist a long time, Thomas. You know, as well as I do, that those channels do serve a purpose," She glided over to where he was standing. He wanted to step away, but found himself paralyzed in a single block of space. She put a hand on one of his shoulders. "But when America hears these same words utter from my lips, and when they see my face today they will know once and for all that everything they've feared is true. That's why I am here."

"You're talking about my online show. You're going to appear on my blog."

"Two million hits a day. I surely don't miss an episode." Serena took another hit of her water and pushed her red hair out of her pale face. "I'm going to give your viewers—I'm to give the whole world all the _truth_ they can handle."

For the first time since he saw this woman sitting uninvited in his home, he felt a rousing of curiosity that thrust some of his fear aside. _Maybe this doesn't have to be a deadly invitation_ _after all_. He folded his arms, relaxed his breathing, deciding that it was ill advised to push his luck any further. _And I'm interested in how much you truly know about what is being said during my_ _coming and goings._ Serena had more than enough resources at her disposal to have him followed, no doubt that she knew that he'd been asked to the mayor's estate and subsequently to her chambers to confer with her before her unfortunate passing, but you don't know what was said between us or you wouldn't have asked.

"There are three questions that every Person of Color in this country wants answered." He echoed what she had said a few minutes earlier.

Serena nodded once. "Who killed President Adolphus Sweet? Who is the Caretaker? And, of course, what is the Whirlwind?"

He imagined he was struggling to keep the shocked look off of his face. "Are you going to tell the audience the answers to those questions today?"

"No." She replied without anger. "I will say that once the answer to one of the first two questions is revealed, the other answers almost will reveal themselves in time. I'm hopeful that it won't come to that."

"You've already shown that you have the power to stop me from learning the truth, Serena." He said cautiously. "My question to you, is will you stop me?"

"I'm hopeful that it won't come to that either." She said again and then quickly added, "Our time together grows short, Thomas. May we begin this interview?"

"I record the show from a studio in my basement." He flashed Serena his best goofy smile. "I'm sure you already know where it is."

"Of course I do, Thomas," Serena waved her arm towards the appropriate door and his nerves flared up again. "It's in your best interest to go first."

The studio was a box shaped room which is more wide than big in its owner's eyes and he kicked himself again for not having it painted beyond the bland white it was originally assigned. He also could have had piped the central air and heat down here but decided against it at the time to save a dime. Serena went about shivering almost immediately, sitting her water bottle down for the first time. He had to fight against his own instincts and not give her his jacket top, unknowing of how Pandora's leader would take to his gentlemanly offer of goodwill.

Instead he got down to the business at hand. "I don't normally operate this equipment myself. It might take me as long as 20 minutes to half an hour to set up everything."

Serena pulled a stopwatch out of her pants pocket, synchronized it with the time on her wristwatch and pushed the top button. "You have _15_ minutes, Thomas," She sat on one of the two stools he used in his interviews. "I'll be holding you to that timeframe."

If Serena had made that last statement as some implied threat, he hadn't had the time to concentrate on it. Instead, he glared at a nearby magnetic calendar he had stuck on a makeshift bookshelf over by where his main camera rested on a lanyard.

"What is it, Thomas?" Serena asked. She looked more comfortable sitting atop this stool than she ever did in his easy chair. "What's wrong?"

Thomas sat back on his own seat without looking back at it, dumbfounded. "I have a maid, her name is Eloise." He glared back at the calendar on his counter to be sure. "She comes in once a week to clean the townhouse for me."

Serena rubbed her shoulders for warmth. "Again, Thomas, you haven't told me anything that I already don't about you and your life. She is scheduled to clean this place tomorrow."

Thomas slid his stool nearly on top of Serena. He dared put his hands on hers so she could not back away from him. "Did you know that Eloise needed to clean a day early this week." He ducked his head, searching his memory banks for confirmation of what his mind was processing. "There was something...maybe a midweek vacation with her husband who had requested some days off."

"I'm sure that she told you the last time you slept with her, Thomas. That is what you do with her after she finishes cleaning—"

"She has a key." He dared lurch his head closer "She normally would have been here by now and she's never late. Where is she, Serena? Is she being detained as well?"

For the first time since this particular conversation has been struck, Serena's expression flashed blankness at Thomas and caused him to blink rapidly in panic.

Then he watched Serena tilt her head ever so slightly to the right. If he weren't sitting this close, sitting so dangerously close to her, he might not have noted the small movement.

"Are you hearing this?" She said with a hushed voice into some type of communication device clipped to her collar. He hadn't noticed it was there before now. "Roger." She listened to what the party on the other end had to say. "Contact, Shooter. I need this data ASAP." She paused. "Understood; Oracle out."

Still locked in by his vice grip on her stool, Serena leaned in towards Thomas close enough that their lips were close enough to touch. "I'm sure we are well within the 30 minutes I gave you to ready us for this interview, Thomas." She said in a low, dangerous voice that reminded him who was in control here. "Shall we begin?"
Serena

**Dunwoody (Inside Thomas Pepper's Basement Studio); DeKalb County, 4** th **Day**

The field leader of Pandora watched one red light flash above the largest of Thomas Pepper's tabletop computers. He'd finished the setup with still over six minutes to spare. _Well done, Thomas_ ; It was time.

Thomas' intro played with its usual dramatic flair, one Serena Tennyson though was full of preamble, but contained very little true substance. _I might fault his methods but his madness holds much merit, his popularity and most importantly to me today, his_ viewership _doesn't lie. That is the specific reason that I am sitting in this icebox of a room_.

"Please introduce yourself and state the purpose of your visit to my program today?" Thomas asked and took his seat beside her.

She glanced one final time at the stopwatch hanging from a nail just out of sight of the camera. She had set it for the exact time that this broadcast would begin. She had committed the remainder of the countdown to memory. The FBI would have this transmission signal decoded, itemized and her exact location transmitted to local law enforcement within minutes. She had that much time...and little more, to honor one of her final promises made to Caretaker before he died two years ago.

_After you enact 411, give a moment's pause, so that your adversaries have one last chance to save their selves from destruction_. She remembered his words as if the greatest man she'd ever known had said it to her just yesterday. _Allow them a chance to save face, allow both sides to back away from the brink. Remember the sacrifices that I have made, Serena. I order you to save as many lives as you can_

"Serena... you still with us," Thomas was saying.

"I am and thank you for this opportunity to join you today on your show, Thomas." Her smile would not bare its fruit, but she ran her fingers on his knee in an act of humanity that the television cameras liked. Even these micro sized cameras that they were using here in Thomas' igloo of a studio. "My name, as most of you out there know is Serena Tennyson, and I come today to speak on behalf of Pandora." It often troubled her to misrepresent Pandora and its followers as if she were its lord and governor. Yet, she reminded herself that just as Pilot's features had to remain near anonymous to her that his very existence had to remain a secret to the outside world. We did agree that he will reveal himself if I fail to make it back—

For those who are watching or listening to the podcast, Serena, would you briefly elaborate on what Pandora's mission statement is and perhaps a small origin of how this group came to be?"

"I will, Thomas. Thank you." Serena sat up a little straighter. Thomas was reading from a questionnaire that she had prepared in advance. Off camera, she informed him that this was his show being broadcast from his home, and so his large personality and ego during the filming of this episode was not only permitted but encouraged. However, he was not allowed to deviate from the prepared questionnaire. If he defied her wishes, a technical difficulty sign would flash across his viewer's computers screens, static would infiltrate the podcast...and Thomas Pepper would be killed minutes later by Pandora agents nearby. "In layman's terms Pandora is attempting to preserve the fragile harmony that exists between the most influential races in our country by maintaining the status quo."

Thomas squirmed and did a half turn on his stool that already seemed to buckle under his weight. "You did say status quo?"

"I did."

"I find your response and use of terminology interesting; as I'm sure many in my audience would as well." He split equal time looking at the camera and at her. He'd mastered the technique. He'd surpassed Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters as the nation's most trusted interviewer over the past number of years. If he were as skillful at researching then he would do Mayor Johnson's dying wish honor. She had chosen well. _And so have I_.

"Some in tonight's web audience would argue that a dominant race, a race that both you and I belong to, have diligently, and sometimes forcefully attempted to keep the prominent minority in this country disadvantaged, if not oppressed?"

_Very impressive, Thomas_ , he nearly read her passage word for word without a prompter or looking at his notes. Still, she fixed Thomas with one of her trademark hard stares that would infuriate some in the audience, and intimidate the rest which was far more important, of course. "I would call that response ignorant." She took a staged deep breath and spun her stool slightly to face the camera to her left and allowed what youthful features she still had remaining, to highlight her face. "And I truly find it sad that such lies and innuendo have left so many misinformed on various fronts vital to understanding our position."

"Please educate us," Thomas said in a deadpan voice.

"People of Color and their culture have blossomed in both status and standing since the twilight of the Civil Rights Movement. Do discrimination, prejudice, and blatant racism still exist in today's world? Well, of course if does. And unfortunately, Thomas, in all likelihood, despite our best efforts, you and I will not live long enough to see a complete eradication of hatred from either side in our lifetime. Even here, in the melting pot that is America, living amongst the most civilized people on this planet, pockets of close minded individuals and groups of individuals continue to carry the banner of hatred around with them." Serena paused for breath and a drink of water. She fought off chills with all of the concentration she could muster. A first impression still meant so much. She knew she would have one opportunity to get this next passage perfect. "Pandora does not endorse, support, or encourage hatemongering on any level, whatsoever. Pandora was founded by a man who cherished _all_ life. "Everything thing that I do, have done, and will do is based on the Caretaker's ideals and principals." She straightened a bit and twisted her long neck so she would deliver the next part of her monologue to the camera facing her from the right. "That being said, make no mistake, Pandora will not tolerate the further deterioration of an already tedious relationship between our race and those who now proclaim themselves People of Color. Extremists' elements, such as those who populate separatist groups like A House in Chains, are the prime offenders of this hatemongering."

Thomas slid back in his chair. "I see." She watched a question form on his bearded face. It was not a matter of when he would ask it, but how he would form his next question. "So you would proclaim the simultaneous and highly choreographed April 1st attacks on The Andrew Young Center, The Siege of the Fox Theater, and the blatant murder of Atlanta's Mayor Ernestine Johnson by poisoning as what, Serena, and an act of extending the hand of friendship?"

"Even I wouldn't be so bold." Serena said and took another deep breath and hoped Thomas Pepper would wisely follow her lead. "I will say this: While each and every life is precious in the eyes of your God, the alternative for this continued defiance by forenamed parties will only result in more People of Color rushing to greet Him."

Thomas looked uncomfortably shaken, as he should be; he tugged at his collar, glanced at the center camera a second, and looked back in her general direction, but whether he was afraid or disgusted by her, he continued to make eye contact with her all the same.

"You speak as if an escalation is coming?"

Serena took the time to steal a hard gaze at the stopwatch hanging on the nail near the center camera. Serena guessed that she came across as a farsighted middle aged woman to the audience, who had left her spectacles home, but that was a price she was prepared to pay. She no longer wished to trust what little time they had left before the authorities arrived to intuition only. _We are running around two minutes behind schedule even with_ _the_...distractions _set in place_. She'd come too far now not to finish delivering Caretaker's message. _They must hear this, no matter the cost. I must keep my word no matter the personal price I must pay._

"People of Color always ask the same three questions, Thomas."

He spoke out of turn, but that was fine by her. "Who killed President Adolphus Sweet? Who is this Caretaker than you speak so fondly of, and what is the Whirlwind?"

"And they are all worthy questions, Thomas." It took every fiber of her being not to warm herself. She was so far away from the Dragon's flames, so far away from its love. "The first is immaterial, in fact most people are asking the wrong question when it comes to Sweet's murder. The second question is inconsequential. The Caretaker is dead, is identity died with him. I will never give up it up unless it benefits those of us he left behind. And the third question... _oh dear, Thomas, You, I, no one in your audience, no one in the entire world hopes to learn what the Whirlwind is_." She considered something that was off script. "I will tell you this: the wraith of The Whirlwind has already been exhibited twice before. You saw it the second time it was showcased, but you missed it with your eyes wide open the first time." Serena nearly smiled.

Thomas recovered from whatever state of stun he had fell into. "Back to these conditions you were speaking of?"

"They are very simple, Thomas." Serena knew she was nearly out of time. "And they are no different than what we have asked before 411 was enacted." Serena saved the center camera for the epilogue of her interview with Thomas Pepper. "First, Xavier Prince is already an inmate at Calhoun State Prison in southwest Georgia. He is scheduled to be released later today. He is to voluntarily rescind this discharge, plead guilty to further charges that include terrorism, munity, collusion, and hate crimes, and remain at this facility until a new trail of his peers can be assembled. Secondly, the other surviving members of A House in Chains governmental body, The Circle, is to turn themselves over to authorities, and share in the guilt and the charges I just laid out to you of their beloved leader. Lastly, A House in Chains is to be unconditionally disbanded, as I and my Pandora associates are prepared to disband as well. We can all turn away from an inevitable conflict before it, as you stated earlier, before it escalates."

"I'm sure that if Xavier Prince can hear this broadcast that he and his associates are considering your offer as we speak." Thomas gave his last statement the proper dramatic pause its implication deserved and then carried on smoothly. Serena's answer to the specifics of what this provocation is was to be featured last. "You admitted to me off camera that at least part of the operational portion that went on at the Fox Theatre suffered through...tactical errors as you put it, Serena, would you care to elaborate."

"It did," Serena found the left camera again. "Benny Stanton, Luna Belle and their associates were ordered hold the theatre for a signal night, then to proceed in killing as many patrons as their ammunition had allowed, exit the premises, and then torch the building."

Thomas Pepper looked ill. "I hope that you don't believe that this acknowledgement of a breach in your orders doesn't comfort the families and friends of those who lost loved ones there?"

"Of course not," Serena said dispassionately. In fact this breach of my orders, as you so eloquently put it, saved lives of People of Color because a mission that was never intended to go on nearly as long as it had did just that." She found the camera sitting to her right once again. "What I am saying is that Stanton was under my command. His actions are ultimately my responsibility. And Stanton's and his failings fall directly in that pocket of small minded people we spoke of earlier, Thomas. Pandora would have never bartered, therefore extended those civilian's suffering, for a hatemonger like James Carter."

"Let's talk for a minute about James Carter now that you mentioned him." Thomas said in a rush. He'd finally gone off script. And Serena knew that her people, specifically Rohm had vacated this theatre of operations, per her orders. And unlike those idiots Stanton and Belle, Shooter had followed her orders so far to the letter. "You stated earlier in this interview that Pandora is not blatant hatemongers, yet you ally yourselves with a man like James Carter who has been notorious for exercising bigoted behavior such as being involved in intimidations, lynches, and beatings of People of Color. In fact he is solely responsible for the whip marks that are rumored to be on Xavier Prince's back right now in some hideous incident when these two men roomed together at Princeton."

Serena snapped back at him. "Carter and all the people who share his narrow mindlessness will not be welcome once the new world order that the Caretaker died trying to create finally comes into existence."

Thomas raised his voice to match hers. "And yet, he serves a purpose right _now_?"

"He does."

"So you would have us believe—"

"Believe what you will, Thomas." Serena was standing, and silently cursed both Thomas and herself for her burst of anger. "I'm disgusted with the losses suffered in the Black Community over the past three days. But parents, children, and friends of those who have fallen can be comforted that their loved ones deaths were not in vain. Pandora has suffered losses as well. But we all can bring this...season of death to a close. I have laid out Pandora's conditions for this to happen, the ball, as they say, is in their court to comply."

The stopwatch beeped.

Their interview...and their time had come to an end.

Serena sat back on her stool and took the longest pull Thomas had seen from her water and acted as if the heated exchange between them had never occurred. She found the precious center camera, one last time. "I am sure by this point of this broadcast, that members of various law enforcement agencies may feel compelled to act against me. I'm sending out me sternest warning against such a hasty and futile exercise. Pandora has not left me unprotected against such retaliations. Contrary to what had been written, said, or speculated about me, I have no desire to see needless bloodshed. Allow me to conclude my interview with Thomas Pepper, leave his residence, and return to Pandora without incident, and you have my word that no law enforcement official will be hurt. Defy my wishes and you only have yourselves and your foolish pride to blame for the losses that you will suffer."

Thomas was still standing, nearly on top of her. Sweat had begun falling from his curly hair. "What is this escalation?" He asked. "Damn you, Serena say _something_."

"For years People of Color have wanted the answer to the same three questions: Who killed President Adolphus Sweet? Who is The Caretaker? And what is the Whirlwind?" Serena said in a monotone voice. "Three days ago, Pandora answered the one question that had been brewing for several months: What is the 411?" She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, blocked out how cold she really was and filled her thoughts with the warmth and love of the Dragon. "It is highly probable that I will be dead soon. What is more important is that in after the days that I am gone, after I am caught up in the Rapture of the Dragon, that you, People of Color have turned away from wickedness, turned away from you vile leaders."

Serena walked off of the set at a steady pace while the cameras still rolled on. She only quickened it after she heard the first explosion in the distance. Thomas nearly fell to the floor and looked around wildly. She picked up a yellow rose from off of the shelf where she had left it the previous night when Pandora first started its incursion of Thomas' home.

She placed the yellow rose on an empty space on the table inches in front of the camera and then took her place next to a shaken Thomas who took an involuntarily step back from her positioning. She found the center camera and a subtle, dignified calm in her tone once again. "If you choose to side with the likes of Xavier Prince, the Circle and A House in Chains, then this local community will have a new, pressing question to ask. Thank you for your time and attention."

"What?" Thomas said stupidly and turned the cameras off as a second explosion erupted, one whose epicenter was closer than the first.

They sprinted up the stairs, returning to Thomas' main living quarters. And though the temperature is instantly ten degrees warmer than that in the basement, Serena could barely contain her trembling. Thomas seemed to be oblivious, or he is occupied with the detonations occurring outside.

"What in the hell are these explosions, Serena?"

Serena begins to unbutton her blouse. "As I said, Pandora was prepared for my peaceful exodus from your townhouse, Thomas. It is apparent that A House in Chains is not the only association not heeding my words these days."

A third explosion, this one the loudest and closest to his townhouse, rocked the building's foundation, breaks his living room windows, and knocks both of them to his wooden floor.

" _God almighty_ , _what is that_?"

"I had every street that leads to this residence mined." Serena stopped long enough to unbuckle her pants and folded them neatly on top of her jacket and blouse after removing them all. She kicked off her flats. "The last few explosions you heard were the ones laid closest to this property. There were a dozen or more scattered about the five mile radius. They were activated only after I made my plea to the authorities not to come here. I told you, Thomas, Pandora values civilian life."

"God almighty," Was all that Thomas Pepper could offer as he neared tears.

Serena turned her back on him, unfastened her sheer bra and stepped out of her white cotton panties. She could feel the man in Thomas staring at what men stared at in nude women, her long legs, her curt but shapely buttocks...but she guessed through all of his lustful thoughts that he gazed longest and hardest at the tattoo of the Dragon that encompassed her entire back, featuring the Dragon's tongue licking the side of her neck.

When she spun back around, Thomas verified her theory two fold as he sat on his wooden floor with an astonished look plastered on his bearded face.

They both heard the blades of a helicopter beginning to hover somewhere outside of his dining room window.

"What am I doing?" She asked the question out loud of what he must have been thinking at the moment. I'm doing what all field generals must do in wartime when the battle is lost." She lay flat on her nonexistent stomach and spread arms as wide as each extremity would go. "I'm surrendering so I can live to fight another day." She looked up long enough to make eye contact with him. "Although you are not the object of the FBI's attention or wraith, I advise you to undress as I have. They may not enter this place with the idea of restraint in their hearts."

Thomas must have figured her for being right, because he undressed as quick as his sizeable fingers allowed and joined her at a cautious distance on the hard wood floor.

She could hear the first wave of men pushing up the stairs. Thomas must have heard it too because he tried to bury his face as far the unforgiving floor would allow him. _Perhaps this is_ _a suicide_ , Serena thought about Pilot's words when the first pang of fear hit her in the chest. At least her fear had a warm element to it as she felt it rush though the rest of her body.

"Am I all that you thought I would be, Thomas?"

"What?" Thomas asked as she heard three, four, and uncountable number of vehicles breaking at street level. The chopper had taken residence outside of the front window now.

"What did you day?"

She poked her head up again and pointed her chin in the direction of Thomas' spare bed room that served as an office. "I've been waiting here for you to arrive last night. I made myself at home. I saw the office...the pictures that you've clipped from magazines and printed off of the internet. You have many shots that even I didn't even know existed of me. It is quite an impressive shrine."

He reddened from either embarrassment or fear. "We are the beautiful and the bold," He finally said as heavy footsteps push their way to the top of the stairway.

Agents of the FBI announced their obvious presence and had busted down his door by the sentence conclusion. Three...four...ten armed agents poured into his townhouse with pistols and rifles drawn in every direction. A dozen more agents slid in behind them once an alley was created. Serena was sure that Thomas never knew his place could ever fit so many human beings inside its walls.

Special Agent Christopher Prince is amongst the second wave of FBI who entered the townhouse.

"Agent, Prince, welcome." Serena announced conversationally. He, like most of the men in this room, wearing the cursed vest with FBI stenciled on the back. It is the one that she has loathed so much when she slaved for the bureau all those years before Pandora summoned her to serve, before The Caretaker called her home. "Your brother must surrender to the authorities at Calhoun Prison. Time is short. If you want to truly serve your people. You will make your younger sibling comply, his time, _all_ of our times are running out."

Christopher Prince and the room full of agents seem to be almost mesmerized by her words. She used the silence to her advantage. "I've said enough for now. I'd like to evoke my right of silence as it is presented under The United States Constitution."

"Whatever you say," Agent Prince kept his gun trained on Serena's forehead as he spoke to a younger female who was just arriving through the open space where the front door once stood. He scanned the room, snatched Thomas Pepper's jacket off of the floor and through it across her buttock and the upper part of her legs. "Agent Blue, read this woman her rights, get her up, dressed, and then get her the hell out of here."

Agent Blue does as she is commanded and cuffed Serena quickly. Prince helped Serena to her feet while another female agent shields her womanhood from view.

Four agents begin to escort her from the front while two more agents join Prince and the two women behind her.

Three male agents were helping poor Thomas Pepper to his feet. He looked as he has some of his curly hair has fallen out, and as if he has lost five pounds since before the interview began. There were dark circles under his eyes. "Serena?" He called out to her and then: "Serena," He said again with enough urgency to stop her...and the FBI agents in their tracks. "No more games," Thomas said "Tell me—tell us: What is this new pressing question that People of Color will be asking in the days to come? Tell us now," Thomas pleaded, Serena thinking she did see tears misting in his eyes. He was weak. Outside of men like Caretaker and her father, they were all so weak. Still, she had nearly gotten the man killed in his own home, so he was entitled to something out of this deal. He deserved to know. They all deserved a chance to know the truth. So she lifted her head high enough so everyone in the room could see another yellow rose resting on top of Thomas' artificial fireplace where she kept company with the Dragon while she waited on him to return home.

"A yellow rose," Thomas said in a low voice, but everyone in the room was perfectly still, they could all hear. "A yellow rose stands for sympathy. You said it was to be another localized event. Who do People of Color in Atlanta need sympathy for, Serena?"

"Themselves," Serena said. "What is the 411 is now in the past. What is The Whirlwind is in our probable future...but for now the immediate question they all will be asking is, where are our children?"
Chapter Five

One man shouldn't wield so much power.

-Ferris Banks, the former warden of Calhoun State Prison's final log entry before his reassignment.
Xavier

**Calhoun State Prison (South Floor of Beta Wing); 5** th **Day**

"It's alright, I've been expecting them," Julian Moore waved Xavier Prince, Warden Donald Bright, and Rose Dixon towards the crude checkpoint of file cabinets and high chairs with his pistol. "Shake them down, make sure they aren't armed and then let them through."

Julian Moore:

He was a brown skinned, wiry shaped Black man, whose eyes were large and very intense. He was tattooed from neck to foot and wore too much hair on his head for Xavier's taste.

He'd chosen an ideal location here down on the South end of the first floor for keeping these hostages safe, but well secured. The library was Calhoun's oldest structure in an already aged composition more wide than deep, with ten foot ceilings and was windowless as far as Xavier could see. He himself had spent many hours in this place during his incarceration. This morning, Xavier could have lived without the musty smell that reminded him of old socks waiting to be washed in the laundry room. He tugged at his tunic as well; _damn, you would have chosen the only area in this whole prison that gets consistently warm this time of year, it is steaming down here._ Xavier knew that this zone set right on top of the prison's furnace. And Julian had his people intentionally turn the gage up to its highest setting.

Julian's Black Knights admitted Xavier and the others after an intense round of pat downs. Xavier heard one man, whose chest hair pushed up out of his tee shirt yell, what in the hell he was doing here? Xavier was unsure whether the question was directed at him or the warden. The hostages, and it looked to be near a dozen civilians and a host of Calhoun's guards among them, were bound, gagged, stripped of all clothing except their under clothes and being kept together on the floor of the Fiction section of the Reading Library, packed tight and undignified in some type of cage.

"Julian," The wiry man lay his gun down on the table and embraced him like a brother. "What are we doing?"

"We wanted to see you before you left for Atlanta, left here for freedom."

"I was told that you demanded that I take part in any negotiation."

Xavier planted a hand on each hip and rolled his eyes back at the warden who was shifting in his stance and finding something more interesting to look at on the dirty carpet. So you lied to my face, Donald. Even in Warden Bright's darkest hour he was still cool, the ice still flowing through his veins. Circumstance had certainly dictated that Xavier would never call this man a friend, but he could respect the way he carried himself.

"I couldn't accept a release with these people's lives hanging in the balance." Xavier would play the warden's game, at least a little while longer. He turned his focus back to Julian. "I needed to stay around long enough to see you get through this."

Julian flashed his associates a look, perhaps 20 armed men in this room alone. "I tried to convince them to wait a few days longer, but the visitation from the Georgia State Council on Prisoner Safety and Welfare was too ironic, and too great an opportunity to let pass. And Riot's Last Gleaming was upon Calhoun at last." Julian said and raised his pistol high to the ceiling. The other prisoners cheered loudly.

The warden stepped in behind them after the applause died down. "Let's cut to the chase shall we gentlemen?" He said in a low, Cajun tone. "You two know that I can't allow this...this insurrection to stand." He lowered his tone even further when he addressed Julian directly. "Inmate Moore, I must demand that that you release those state employees and prison guards into my custody immediately, return Calhoun to my control, and then return peacefully to your cells while you still can."

A dozen black Knights laughed behind them.

Julian's tone matched the wardens. "You aren't in a position to demand anything here... _sir_."

Warden Bright pushed past Xavier and Julian and then two Black Knights to where the hostages were being held. Half a dozen inmates trained their guns on him and Rose Dixon took a large step forward as if she would defend her warden...or die trying. Julian raised his right hand in the air for peace. He knew the warden's actions were truly of no consequence here.

"Is everyone here okay?" Warden Bright squeezed the bars with his fingers. "Does anyone need medical attention?" The ten men and two women made eye contact with him as best they could, but all shook their heads. The prison guards were being kept closer towards the copy room. "I need each and every one of you to trust me. I am searching for a way to secure your release as soon as possible." One of the women started crying, her pleas muffed by the gag over her mouth. "Be strong for your families. I won't let you die here. You have my word on that."

Julian hopped up on a desk and sat down. "Then, Warden, you must be prepared to give in to our demands." He said. "This prison that you inherited is a hell hole. You are a Prince of the damned."

"Look...Julian is it?" Xavier watched the Black Knight nod. "I've read my predecessors logs. Warden Fain's decade long rule here was nothing short of a travesty, to say the least. That, in part, is the reason I was brought in." Bright took his place next to Xavier and Rose Dixon. "But you haven't given my administration a chance to settle in. We haven't had a fair opportunity to fix what's broken here." He pointed towards the cage, the hostages hanging on his every word. "This gets us nowhere."

Rose said, "The National Guard and The Georgia State Police are in route as we speak, Inmate Moore. What kind of mood do you think they will be when they arrive and find out that not only that you have taken state employees hostage, but have them caged like common animals?"

"Look at the concern etched on my face, fat girl." Julian gleefully hopped down off the desk again. Xavier had known the man almost from the day he started his sentence. This wasn't an act, but Julian had been known to let his passions govern his thinking patterns. He turned his large eyes on Xavier. "You should have gotten the hell out of this place when you had the chance, bro." He said to Warden Bright. "And beyond our grievances we have nothing to talk about."

The warden cautiously pulled Julian's list out of his shirt pocket and read some of the list aloud so that the hostages specifically could hear them. "Every issue on your list is solvable or at least correctable, given adequate time and attention."

"Time's running low," Julian sprinted over to the cage and waved his pistol at the state workers. "These good folks over here don't have a lot of time."

Xavier swallowed hard. Up into this point he had been satisfied to lie back in the background of this crisis and observe. Now that he had attainted at least a little information, he knew it was time to start keeping his word to warden. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth.

"Julian, you are too smart to let a tremendous opportunity to advocate change—real change in this place, pass through your fingertips."

Julian's large eyes sunk a little as he tried to mask the hurt, the betrayal he'd obviously felt at that moment. "What in hell are you talking about, bro? And whose side are you on anyway?" He kept his pistol out, but thankfully with the barrel pointed towards the floor as he approached Xavier. "Your father taught us to seek retribution for sins committed against our brethren. This is what we are doing here."

"Isaac Prince did say just that." Xavier stood on his toes and said it loud enough for the entire room to hear. "And I thought I taught you better than that, Julian. Have you completed the first to parts of the mandate? Have you and these Black Knights of yours gained self-respect first, respect of your family after that, and finally the respect of your community. Have you really?" When Julian failed to answer immediately, Xavier said, "My father taught us only after these tasks are completed in full, may we seek the retribution against those who have sinned against us."

Warden Bright finally spoke into the silence that followed. "Julian, you have my word that my office will bid out three or four of these maintenance issues by the close of business hours today."

"I'll hold him to his word, Julian." Xavier said.

Julian kept his pistol raised but dropped his head. Xavier knew from his long conversations with the man that the former gang banger was giving their proposal a long consideration. And where Julian Moore lead the Black Knights were likely to follow—

And then it all went to hell.

Rose Dixon moved quicker than any woman her size had the right to. She snatched Julian's pistol out of the grasp out of an inmate idly standing next to her, batted Julian's pistol from his hand, and had the first man's pistol lodged against Julian's head in one lighting motion.

" _Damn you, Rose_ ," Warden screamed at the woman. " _What are you doing_?"

Rose backed both her large frame and Julian, who she had in a choke hold, to the wall so no other inmate could slip in behind her. "Inmate Moore, you will order these men of yours to release these civilians right now or I will blow your brains all over this library."

Two of the Black Knights grabbed Xavier and he could feel the cold steel of guns planted on each side of his temple. A shiver ran down his spine. He had known fear before, but rarely had he experienced an episode bathed in such urgency. Warden Bright wasn't doing much better as three inmates surrounded him. The two guards that had accompanied them down here had drawn the remainder of gang bangers attention.

"Everyone," Xavier struggled to keep his voice from quivering. "Lower your weapons."

"Rose," The warden used his indoor voice, ironically suited for a library. "Mr. Moore and I were very close to reaching a gentleman's agreement weren't we, Julian?"

"How about it, Julian," Xavier asked, he tried to tilt his head away from at least one of the barrels trained on him. "Do we have an agreement, or are you going to sit back and allow a slaughter to begin over cold cells, clogged toilets, and frozen meals?"

"Sure," Julian struggled to say through the choke hold. Rose loosened her grip some. "All of the hostages we are holding here and the security personnel that are being held near the copy room will be released only after the warden here agrees to all 31 of the issues that I've written on that paper."

Just as a victorious grin begins to play on Warden Bright's face it disappeared as if it never existed in the first place. He scanned the list again...and again from top to bottom with a trembling hand.

"Julian, you must be in error, son." He said. "You've got it numbered. I only count 30 requests on this paper."

Julian made a hand motion for Warden Bright to flip the paper over to the other side.

The Warden exhaled in exasperation and looked away. "You can't be serious."

"I'm dead serious." Julian didn't blink. Rose had released her grip enough for Julian to walk away from her without incident. The Black Knights still had their guns pointed at the three of them, but Xavier felt as if the chance of a slaughter had been downgraded a notch or two. He hoped that trend would continue. A lot depended on what Julian said next. "In exchange for the lives of your sweet, innocent civilians, Warden, I want these five known Klansmen brought here from the west wing. They were found guilty in a court of law and are now serving life sentences for the lynching and murder of three Black activists over in Albany seven years ago." Julian finally found his place, directly in front of Xavier Prince.

"You just said it, Julian," The warden said. "They were convicted in a Georgia court of law. They are serving life sentences, justice has been served. What else could you possibly want from these men?"

"I want justice for what they've done _here_."

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

Xavier said, "Do you really want to do this, Julian."

"I tried to wait until you were released, my brother." Was all that Julian Moore could manage, he hugged Xavier Prince around his neck and whispered in the other man's ear. "You've done so much for me. I owed you this. I owed you...justice."

Julian released Xavier and turned back so that every inmate, prison guard, hostage and...every warden would hear his words...and remember.

"Let me tell you all a story, a true story, a tale full of glory and sadness. A few years ago a young man by the name of Xavier Prince was accepted into Princeton University prestigious law school. He was only one of 138 who were accepted into a small, but impressive class that included another name that would be familiar to most people in this room, a hatemonger named James Carter." Julian Moore said, letting the names and faces burrow themselves in his listeners conscious. "Two men with very different backgrounds roomed together, but rarely interacted, or at least it appeared that way to the other members of the freshman class and staff at the law school. " Julian looked back at Xavier with large, sympathetic eyes. "This man was the only Black man in the entire law program at the time; we are talking about Princeton here. Xavier Prince thrived during the day. He quickly rose to the top of his class. Some of his instructors have commented, even when they are interviewed now, that this man may have had the brightest law mind they had ever seen. I only wish he had done as well after dark. There were nights when he did feel...isolated. There were nights when he felt so very alone."

Julian began to pace the floor, slow at first, but soon his stride quickened until it was nearing a fever pitch. "James Carter hadn't had a whole lot to say to Xavier over the first year. In fact, there were times that the other young man seemed downright hostile to the young Georgia native, the son of a renowned Black activist, who had founded A House in Chains years earlier. Carter had grown up in Georgia as well. He'd been raised as the son of a man who ran a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan."

Julian Moore had stopped in one sudden motion. All eyes in the room were fixed on him. Even Xavier Prince watched his every move.

One night, one very fateful night, Carter finally spoke at length with Xavier Prince. Carter knew about the other man's past and told Xavier that they should not allow their father's decisions affect how they lived their lives moving forward. They were going to be lawyers if not judges someday. They were going to change the _world_. Why should they not act like friends and go out and celebrate the future." Julian said and looked at Xavier Prince for a long time. It was Xavier who gazed away at last because he already knew how this tale ended, the horror that soon followed. He had lived it, of course.

"Carter had laid an ambush in waiting for Xavier Prince. Four local men from a New Jersey chapter of the Klan helped Carter beat the black man within inches of his life."

The woman hostage who had cried earlier looked as if a fresh round of tears were building in the corners of her eyes. An inmate cursed. Warden Bright said, "God Almighty," and looked away.

Julian continued when the room quieted again. "This is all heartbreaking but true. Yet, friends and neighbors, we haven't reached the tragic climax of this story _just_ yet." He put a long emphasis of his pronouncement of the word just for effect. "The four local men stripped Xavier of his shirt, then they stripped him of his pants and his underwear...and then they stripped a Black man...a Man of Color...of everything left that was meaningful to him. They stripped Xavier Prince of his dignity." Julian stopped for breath. This was a harrowing tale for Xavier Prince to hear. And if he hadn't experienced it...lived through it himself...he might not have believed such a horrible thing could have truly have happened.

"James Carter took a bullwhip that was a going away gift from his father, and whipped Xavier with it. He lashed him...once...twice... _thrice_...again and again...and again. He told Xavier that _he_ was in control here. The man on the wrong end of the bullwhip was actually the governor of his own fate. Carter told him that the lashes would only continue until the beaten man screamed."

One of the inmates, a man who looked the part of a fish out of water, walked behind Prince, gave him a hard measured look and ripped the shirt from Xavier's body. He had to see for himself if Julian Moore's story were true.

Xavier Prince stood motionless in the middle of the library, lonely once again, except for his scars and the mark of A House of Chains to comfort him.

"32 strokes later, for each year that Sarah Woodward, Xavier Prince mother had lived, he finally did scream. Some neighbor residents have testified years later that they heard it. They say that this scream...this _sheik_ that went on, what sounded like forever sounded inhuman."

Julian Moore stopped long enough to center his attention on Warden Bright. "This inhumanity hadn't written its final chapter and verse _just_ yet." Julian stressed the just one last time. "The four local Klan's men had planted a cross in an empty lot just off campus. However, Carter, the young brilliant mind that he was, had the men dig the cross up and alter its shape. After all, Xavier Prince was the son of the founder of A House in Chains. He deserved better than to have his wrist and ankles strapped to a cross like lesser Black men.

"A half an hour later the other men had reshaped the cross into an X...for Xavier, of course." Julian suddenly stopped, choked back tears. Three other hostages, several inmates and one prison guard, who had a dash of salt and a pinch of pepper in his beard failed to hold back theirs. Xavier drunkard eyes only misted. "He was nude and beaten, so it took the strength of three men to rope his wrist and ankles to the X. Carter watched the entire scene with his own arms crossed...and a satisfied grin on his face."

"Xavier was up against a wind. He hung there until an 11 year old white girl saw him while she was walking to the bus stop two days later. Neighbors say that she had unleashed quite an impressive scream out herself with her discovery."

Warden Donald Bright rubbed at his nose and mouth again and again until Xavier thought the man's face would chafe. Rose Dixon never moved, and her pretty face showed little reaction.

Julian Moore finished the story by saying, "For a long time, Xavier Prince never revealed who did it. The Four local men went back their lives. James Carter suddenly got homesick, quit school, and went home to work in the family business." Julian Moore said. "But the walk of death and life would not take Xavier Prince without a fight. He recovered from his wounds in a local hospital over the next several weeks, returned to Princeton, finished at the top of his class, and earned and graduated with a law degree."

"And these men you are asking for that are in this prison?" Warden Donald Bright asked while the room still sat quietly, in a stunned silence. It was such a quiet moment that it felt it the Earth herself was holding still. "What do they specifically have to do with the disturbing story you just told us?"

"I have proof that these types of men can't be rehabilitated. I have proof that that these types of men have the culture of hate for Men of Color imbedded in their hardened hearts." Julian Moore scooped up Xavier's shirt from the floor and handed it back to him. "Most importantly, I have proof that James Carter had paid these men to kill Xavier Prince as he was originally scheduled to leave Calhoun Prison today."
Serena

**Fulton County Jail; Downtown Atlanta, 4** th **Day**

The FBI hoped to sneak her into the courthouse after midnight and under the cover of darkness.

Serena Tennyson estimated that thousands of Atlanta residents braving the night's chill had proven their logic flawed.

The mob had camped out in the lot across the street from the courthouse, in the bowels of the parking garage behind the building and had begun sitting on the curve beside the road. Most were baring picket signs, screaming obscenities, humming old Bible hymns and chanting. The boldest of them had flung eggs and pebbles and stones at her, before the APD identified the offenders and launched their selves into the mass to apprehend them.

Serena could barely breathe in the bullet proof vest that covered her from just below her neck to her shins. The FBI has stuck a helmet, something what a gladiator would dawn before entering the coliseum for battle. Special Agent Christopher Prince continued to keep his vice like grip on her already chained wrist with his left hand, while shoving the back of her hair and head as far down as her tall frame could manage. His partner, Agent Tabitha Blue, pushed her forward by the base of her spine. Serena had never felt so irritated and so...comforted by another human being's touch.

"Make a _hole_ , people," Agent Blue screamed at the crowd of uniformed police and members of the press that had clogged the walkway that led to one the side entrances of the courthouse.

Serena felt nauseated, discombobulated, as if he were now floating and not walking. For a single moment in time she was transported back in time, back in place. This scene played out so very much like the way her marathon races would end when she was in her freshman year in high school. Reporters, teammates and most importantly, her father, would be waiting for her as she led the field after a long race.

_I want you to remember how you feel right now_ ; he had told her after winning a particularly grueling contest. _When life throws you its most tormenting curve, when mankind is at its ugliest, I want you to think of how you overcame it all to achieve this triumph. I want you to always treasure this moment right here, right now; and never forget the Dragon's call: You'll do fine, you will be good, and you can still fly._

A stone found the tiniest gap between the lid and the protective visor and stuck her near her left cheek.

"It came from over _there_ ," Blue stopped long enough to tug at the shirt tail of one of the uniformed officers. "I want the person who threw that arrested right now." Blue stood back to back with Serena, and wrapped her arms around the other woman's hips killing any gap between them. " _Stop this madness, now_. I promise you that Justice will be served if you allow us to do our jobs." She spun back around and quickly restarted where she left off shoving Serena forward. " _Make a Goddamned hole, people_." Blue said. " _Move it_."

The processing portion of her detention was an exercise in time consumption and humiliation. First, a butterball of a man drinking from a coffee mug, greeted Agent Prince, shook his hand, and told him that they would be assigning two female officers to stay with the prisoner at all times while they booked her. Secondly, the two women joined the FBI ensemble, walked her to the area where they fingerprinted her, snapped several mug shots, and unlocked her wrist and ankle chains and instructed her shower. "It's so cold in here." She hugged herself, twisting around so the Dragon showcased its power and beauty to all the nonbelievers in the low lighting, until the two female officers protected her privacy by blocking anyone else's line of vision with their own frames.

"Your processing will be concluded soon enough." Agent Prince signed a form for one officer whose hair was a matted mess, and then entered his authorization code on a data pad for another one who had a grease stain on his chin. "They're scheduling you for a very early arraignment in the morning—he looked at the digital clock on the wall—later this morning."

"Thank you," Serena said with her lip quivering, her body warming at a glacial pace. Agent Prince ignored her and had already taken steps toward the exit. "You have proven to be every bit the opponent that your brother has been."

Agent Prince spun back around. "I'll say this to you this one time, Serena," He said. "Don't talk to me, don't _ever_ talk to me."

Serena lowered her head, letting the warming water wash over her red hair. "As you wish," He turned back to exit again when Serena added: "But you and I will fellowship again before my end, before the Whirlwind begins. I have seen it in the flames."

Serena's words had halted the special agent's progress in the middle of the doorway. You are a strong man, Christopher, stronger than your brother is in fact, but at the end of the day, if you do not turn from your nonbelieving ways and accept the Dragon...

And yet, Agent Prince did not accept the Dragon into his heart then and Serena doubted that he would anytime soon, as he walked out of the door without responding or looking back at her.

An hour later it was all over.

Serena lay on the hard tile of her jail cell. When Serena parents died weeks after she'd won that marathon, she'd lived the remainder of her adolescent years moving from border home to border home. The family's changed. The rules and regulations changed. The rooms changed. The beds changed. The floors _never_ changed. She had found a stability, familiarity and comfort in floors that had stayed with her all the way through adulthood. Lying on this floor was no different than the one in her condominium in suburban Atlanta home and no different than luxurious hotel suite that Pilot had leased for her at The Bank of America Hotel where she was staying when she unleashed 411 on the city of Atlanta.

Agent Tabitha Blue and the two other female agents had long abandoned her for other duties. She knew, from research, that the courthouse and adjoining jail housed at least 50 female prisoners, but they had isolated her from the other inmates. The room was too cool to her liking, the lighting low, and she was far from the Dragon's flames...or its love.

They had assigned her three uniformed officers, one of them female, the other two males, all three People of Color on the other side of her bars. Serena was sure that there were countless other officers on the other side of the door, down the hall, and guarding the sides of the building. The FBI wanted to guarantee that no one would try to extract her from the courthouse and no one was getting in either.

At last, a blessed sleep threatened to pull her up into its bosom, she prayed it would be without nightmares...or visions...

Serena Tennyson was wrong.

She was so very wrong...

The light that greeted her on the other side of sleep, or wherever _this_ was, nearly blinded her. She had to shield her eyes from the brightness as she walked towards the lone figure that she saw. Someone...it looked like a man, was sitting cross legged on a wooden bench in a park. There were no birds humming or flying, no bees buzzing about, there didn't even so seem to be ants crawling in the dirt. Outside of Serena and this man, there didn't look to be anything living in the park besides the trees and bushes and flowers scattered about.

She walked up to the bench.

Thomas Pepper looked back over his shoulder at her.

"Hello." He said. "I thought you would never get here."

"What are you doing here?" Serena asked. She would not panic the way a non-believer would. The Dragon had exposed to her to an abundance of stimuli since she had accepted her calling after her parents death. Visions and prophecy had been introduced her in dreams before. Whatever this was—it was no different.

"Your contact with Pepper at his home, that intimacy you experienced with that man led to this. I am but a shadow, an echo of that man you know on the other side." He beckoned her to sit next to him. After she obeyed, he said, "Serena, I'm here today...tonight in your world, to offer you the opportunity to turn away from the path you are walking. This is your last chance to avoid disaster. This is your last chance to avoid The Whirlwind."

"The Whirlwind," She laughed; the sound of it foreign in her own ears. "The Whirlwind is something that Caretaker conjured up, something that I will implement on my enemies if it—"

"The Whirlwind is something a great deal more personal than that, Serena." Thomas Pepper or this entity that wore his guise said. "Serena, every human being, even those who follow the teachings of the Dragon like you do, potentially suffer from their own Whirlwind if they are pushing too hard...if they are reckless. You have been reckless, Serena."

She sat back on her heels. "I have followed the teachings of The Dragon. I have followed the wishes of the Caretaker."

"You have not exercised free will. Your recklessness will result in destruction beyond repair and the death of a great many people. From this point forward you will bring out the bad in good men. And bring out the worse in bad men. Yet, if you turn away right now, then your Dragon is little more than a metaphor...your Caretaker in error, or a liar."

Serena had no response for what Thomas Pepper said. He was on his feet; a big man dressed in one of the other's signature tailored suits and extended a big left hand to her. She avoided human contact as often as he could...but he wasn't quite human was he? And until Thomas Pepper, the real Thomas Pepper had seen my nakedness as I undressed in front of him at his townhouse before the Feds arrived...no man had ever seen all of her. Serena had kept herself pure as the teachings of the Dragon had expected of her. She accepted his hand and walked with him.

One minute all of the light in the entire world was behind them, while darkness ruled the realm in front of them. After another minute, three doors appeared out of the nothingness. Serena waited on Thomas to explain...but all he did was squeeze her hand...touch her unlike she had ever allowed a man on the other side to touch her before.

He wore a tired, sad look on his squared jaw. "As you can see, Serena, there are three doors in front of you. Behind each one is a point that you can avoid your Whirlwind, here and now. If you choose not to...if you choose _recklessly_ , then you risk the probable outcome of what you see evolve from behind each door." He said. She nodded in understanding, but did not interrupt.

"When you are exposed to each scenario, I will ask you to turn away and that door will close to you forever. Again, if you choose not to...again, if you choose unwisely, we will move to the next door and so on. If you have not turned way back the time the third and final door shuts, I will simply ask you to turn around, so you may continue you're walking your path towards your own personal Whirlwind." He paused for a very long time. "Do you understand, Serena?"

"I do."

Thomas released her hand and she let it fall to her side.

The first door opened and a tiger...albeit it a paper tiger leaped out. She drew back, fearing at first that she would be the object of its attention. It swerved around her, lay on its stomach for an instant, snarled and let out a mighty roar. Then it repeated the same action, but when it opened its fanged mouth this time it purred like a common housecat would. In fact, Serena took notice of its stripes and how the stripes altered color and shape and number with each blink of her eye, as if the thing didn't know what type of tiger it actually was. Finally, the darker stripes remained, the snarl intense, and Serena imagined the roar would be frightening when it decided to unleash it again.

Six chocolate covered paper children began walking hand and hand down a paper street. Serena watched the snarl from the paper tiger intensify. At the right moment he pounced on the children...one...and then another...and another, until he was standing with all of his weight on top of them. The chocolate children flapped their arms and legs but the tiger was too heavy, too powerful to remove. Their mouths opened to scream and either Serena couldn't hear them or the sound wasn't coming out.

Another minute passed. In the second minute, one of the paper chocolate children stopped waving his arms and legs...he stopped moving at all. The next minute saw another child repeat the action or inaction of the first one. The remaining children opened their mouths wider, but again Serena heard nothing ushering out.

Thomas Pepper said, "What is your decision, Serena?"

She folded her arms and stood flatfooted in defiance. "I understand the symbolism here, Thomas." She said in a confident voice. "The Paper Tiger is Louis/Hugh Keaton. Those children are caricatures of Black children in Atlanta. Although the two deaths are unfortunate, Operation Where are our Children looks as if it succeeded as I planned it."

So Serena nodded her head, no.

The first door closed, she heard an audible click of a lock bolting and second door opened immediately thereafter behind her.

Thomas Pepper said, "You should turn away."

And Serena was surrounded by flames.

The Whirlwind was all around her. Thomas looked unfazed. She fanned the flames as best she could, but they only seemed to grow in intensity and heat. She ran back into the light and seemed to find some relief from the inferno there. Thomas was standing next to her at this point as if he'd always been by her side.

In the distance, Serena saw a small scaled replica of Atlanta. The flames had encompassed the city from the sides and from areas both front and behind it. Paper people ran one way and then another. She could hear them screaming this time. The shrieks of fear and pain nearly overwhelmed her. Some of the cries cascaded from people that she knew.

_Am I signally responsible for all of this death and destruction_ , Serena thought, but dared not say aloud.

"You are," Thomas voiced the answer to her unspoken thought. He turned to her but never lost his eye for the flames. "Turn away from your path here, turn away right now and this destruction stops before it ever begins."

Serena neared tears. Her father had sacrificed so much. The Caretaker had sacrificed so much more.

"No." She said again.

The second door closed, and once again she heard an audible click of a lock bolting and the third and final door opened immediately thereafter behind her.

Thomas Pepper said, "You should turn away."

There was a huge paper chocolate man stomping about. What Serena noticed most about him is that he wore a crown on his brow that grew larger and larger...and _larger_ as the minutes passed them by. He had a flock of paper people walking behind him. And there numbers grew so big, so fast that Serena quit trying to count them all.

Across a street, a group of paper pasty white people were marching towards to where the huge chocolate man with the oversized crown and his flock were standing.

The crown eventually grew too large for the chocolate king and Serena heard it rattle as it fell around his ankles. He clumsily marched on and tripped over his own crown. If he was dead or injured from his fall, Serena could not tell.

Both the chocolate colored paper people and the pasty white paper people paused for only a minute as if they were honoring the fallen, drew out paper sticks and charged each other.

Many of the chocolate covered people fell from what...some type of an illness or disorder...even before the battle had been engaged.

When the combat had ended there were scores on both sides who had been slaughtered. Serena saw such much red paint...so much _blood_ , that she felt the same sensations in her gut, chest, head and face as she did when The FBI rushed her into the side entrance of the courthouse.

She hugged herself, and felt her body trembling.

Thomas had to stop himself for reaching out to comfort her. He bore a look mixed of frustration, disbelief, anger and sadness.

He said to her, "You should turn away."

" _I can't, Thomas_." She yelled over the cries of the dead and dying. "Even if I wanted to, I've come too far to turn back now."

The final door closed, and Serena found that after she blinked again that she and Thomas were seated on the wooden bench as when this whole episode started. This time, however, she saw birds flying in the sky, she heard bees buzzing about, and a school of ants crawled on her shoe.

Thomas Pepper had changed with the scene as well.

He had lost a lot of his weight, his hair had thinned and most of the life had drained out of his eyes.

He was watching children playing in the distance...what appeared to be real children, not paper caricatures, playing together in a space perfect for viewing although he couldn't reach out to them as he might have wanted to.

He slowly turned around and found her eyes with his own tired, sad eyes.

And Thomas Pepper or whatever this entity had been said, "You should turn around, Serena." And when she did not right away he said again with gruff in his tone. "You should turn _around_..."

...And when Serena did finally turn around, she was back on the jail's floor and had tuned in time enough to hear one of the male uniformed officers' call out to the other one. "Hey Freddy,"

Officer Fred Dennison:

He was a brown skinned Black man who was all chests, shoulders, afro and beard. Since his friend had broken his concentration, he stopped doing his paperwork long enough to stretch and yawn. The lone female officer noisily pushed her chair back from her own desk and told the other two that she was stepping out back for a smoke and would make another pot of coffee if they wanted some when she got back.

Dennison called out to her: "Please do, Pam. Just make sure you wash your nasty ass hands before you do." Both men laughed. She removed the cigarette from her grip long enough to give her co-workers the finger before closing the door behind her.

Fred stretched again and said to the other officer: "And Joe, I ain't got time for your bullshit. It's almost 7:30 AM. The sun's already up. You see all this paperwork I still got to finish before the end of our shift an hour from now. The old lady's about sick of all the overtime I've been working. I'm going to get this shit done, and work a little _somethin_ '... _somethin_ ' this morning with her before she's off to work herself."

Joe Wilson had ignored his friend and edged himself closer to her cell. "Yea, you'll tell me anything, Freddy. But I've seen you watching this one since they brought her ass in last night." Wilson said to his friend Fred Dennison without looking at him. "Why don't you come a little closer and take a closer look at this."

Officer Joe Wilson:

He had a small build, golden brown skin, green eyes and his hair could not decide whether it was brown or red when the sunlight hit it from above.

"She's a little bony for my taste, man." Officer Dennison replied and went back to his paperwork. "I know you like them types though. I'll tell you what...why don't you look enough for the both of us while I finish this—"

"Why don't you come over here?" Joe Wilson waved a single finger at her.

Serena's heart thumped louder in her chest as she sat up and slid her frame into the corner of her cell as far as she could from Officer Joe Wilson and his little probing green eyes. He kept summoning his friend to his side, the other man finally giving in to the adolescent chiding.

"You know, I was talking to one of the reporters outside, you know after the cameras finally went dark last night." Officer Wilson said. "Patsy Clark, you know the brunette who looks like she needs a new hairstylist, actually allowed the word _brilliant_ come out of her mouth when she went to describing this bitch. Patsy thought that even after what this woman said on that web program with that other reporter...what's his name...the big guy?"

Dennison nodded his fat head. "Yea, you are talking about Pepper, Thomas Pepper who used to write for The Advocate."

"Yea, that's him."

"And now that you say it, I remember what you told me that chick reporter said to you last night." Dennison's frown grew intense. "She thought it took a superior mind to conjure up mining those streets that led to Pepper's crib like that."

Wilson shook an oversized key ring out of his pocket, sifts through them until he has found the correct one, and unlocked her cell...and stepped inside. Dennison took a long hard look over his shoulder for Pam, and gazes back at his partner and ask him what in the hell did he think he was doing.

"If she's so smart I need her to educate me some."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know Johnathan Boatwright?"

Dennison had to search his memory. "Yea, I know him; he's a skinny dude who worked Buckhead a lot last year."

"He _was_ a skinny dude, man." Joe Wilson said. "He was one of the first patrolmen to get the call when the feds learned that she was up at Pepper's townhouse."

" _Boom_ ," Fred said and threw his hands towards the ceiling to highlight the effect.

Serena jumped. She steadied her left hand as Fred Dennison laughed out loud at his own absurdity. _Stay calm, Stay focused_ , she thought, _let them have their fun_. _They aren't stupid_ _enough to try anything with you_.

Under normal circumstances her training would provide her with more than an adequate chance to disarm and kill both these men with simply her bare hands. But she'd been weakened by her processing, her lack of food and proper rest. And, rather she wanted to admit it or not, shaken to her marrow by the vision she'd experienced with the parody of Thomas Pepper and his three doors to prophecy.

And that hard look...the look of _hatred_ , especially in the eye of the big one, Officer Fred Dennison unnerved her.

"A blast like that normally would kill a man on the spot." Officer Wilson was saying.

"What, Joe, don't tell me that he survived?"

"Nah, man...Boatwright died last night." Wilson sounded remorseful. "He lived long enough for me and some of the guys to see him at the hospital."

Wilson began to approach her again, while his partner backpedaled towards the door where Officer Pam Greer had walked out of to smoke her cigarette. Serena felt the cold steel of the bars behind her massage her shoulders as he leaned on them. Her lips trembled and she tasted something sour in her mouth.

Joe Wilson stood nearly on top of where she was seated.

"I'll never forget the look of uncertainty plastered in Boatwright's eyes even as his face couldn't be seen under all those bandages." Joe said in a low voice that only she could hear. Fred Dennison was well out of hearing range. "He was so scared."

Serena had hoped that Dennison, at the least, would come to his senses when he reached the door. But instead of looking out of it for Officer Greer she heard him lock it, the bolt sliding true with an audible click.

The sound reminiscent of the closing doors of prophecy in the vision she experienced earlier.

"What I like is that the same look my friend had in his eyes before he died," Wilson continued. His friend Dennison had reentered the cell and locked it behind him. "I really like that you... you _little_ brilliant bitch, you have that look on your face right now as well."

Joe Wilson shook his red head once and then again. "But I'm going to wipe that look off of your face; there ain't any reason for you to be scared of old Joe." He slid his belt through his loop, handed his gun to Fred and began to unbutton his pants. He asked about Greer, while he kicked off his shoes.

Dennison's hard look held up. He told Wilson that Greer was probably running her mouth with the detectives who were arriving early for their shift. She ain't had a steady man in months.

"Well, that fact is gonna change real fast for _you_ isn't it, Rooster?" Joe said to her as he lifted her chin. "Even after you threatened Black children in front of the entire world, it wasn't a guarantee that our justice system would convict you. Even after you admitted that you gave the order to kill innocent people on 411 there was still no guarantee that they would toss you in a cell like this one and throw away the key."

"You're right, Joe." Dennison agreed. " _They_ always get off."

He squatted down next to her and Serena turned her head away. "What I am going to do right now...I'm going to be brilliant. I am going to prove once and for all that rape is not about sex but about power. I'm not the least bit attracted to you. But I'm going to guarantee that you never forget this moment of my total control over you."

Wilson ripped at her jail issued gown, while he fumbled with releasing his manhood from his trousers. Dennison had his own gun out and pointed at her head and the look of hatred on his face was unnecessary because Serena was already convinced that he will shoot her if she makes too much of a fuss.

Serena struggled, shook her head wildly in denial, and managed to flip over, ending up on her knees.

That didn't work in her favor however. Wilson used the bars of the cell—and then his own body weight to pin her in the corner.

Serena had exhausted her last avenues of escape.

If she dared to scream, she knew that Dennison would shoot her.

She could feel Wilson's hand ripping at her underwear...she could feel him hardening as _it_ began to part her thighs and grace her pubic hairs.

Serena remembered her conversation with Louis Keaton, in what feels like a lifetime ago: _And often too many of them are uneducated, unreliable and act too uncivilized to contribute to society._

Wilson slapped her once across her head and when her face took the brunt of an impact with the bars all of her resistance at last came to an end.

As the first tears ran down her face, Serena Tennyson looked past the bars, and in her mind's eye she saw her father waiting for her at the end of a grueling marathon. _I want you to remember how you feel right now, his voice resonated lovingly in her mind, when life throws you its most tormenting curve, when mankind is at its ugliest, I want you to think of how you overcame it all to achieve this triumph. I want you to always treasure this moment right here, right now; and never forget the Dragon's call:_

You will be fine.

You'll be good.

You can still fly.

Serena heard a gunshot.

And then she heard the glass on the topside of the door where Officer Pam Greer has gone to smoke shattering.

Officer Joe Wilson stopped before he could finish entering her, before he could go where she had allowed no man to go before in her life. The woman was calling for them.

Dennison said, "Turn your ass around, Pam, and walk back out of here right now."

Pam Greer held her nine millimeter out in front of her, her feet planted squarely on the tile, and didn't move, not with eight shots still left in her gun.

" _Back off of the prisoner right now_ ," She commanded them. " _If both of you idiots want to live you'll do as I say."_

Serena could hear the cavalry—dozens upon dozens of uniformed officers running towards this block. Wilson yelled back at Greer that Serena deserves this and so much more. Dennison turns his own gun on Pam—a mistake in which she makes him pay with his life, when she fires two rounds into the skin just above his left eye before he completed his turn.

" _Joe, don't make me kill you too."_ Pam said, tears streaking down her cheeks.

Officer Pam Greer:

She was a petite brown skinned black woman with big brown eyes, big lips and a stylish haircut who was holding a big nine millimeter handgun in her small hands.

Wilson knew that he wouldn't be able to reach his gun that was trapped underneath Fred Dennison's dead body—so he must have decided right then—that if he was going to die this morning that he would serve Serena her breakfast first.

He grabbed Serena by her head and decided to shove his manhood between her other lips instead—

And Officer Pam Greer dropped him where he once stood by shooting him in his head.

Serena never moved from her seated place on the tile, while she watched the room fill with uniformed officers. One of the senior voices called for Officer Greer to stand down, first in a commanding, then a more sympathetic tone. She lowered her weapon but did not holster it.

Instead, she unlocked the cell door, entered, and kicked both weapons away from the carcass that was once Officer Fred Dennison. She choked back further tears and placed two fingers on his neck and checks for a pulse. Serena noted that death has robbed Dennison of his hard look that he must have learned to master over the years.

Next, while the other officers stare in a stunned silence, Officer Pam Greer moved on to Officer Wilson, performed the same ritual on him and finally stood up at her full height, finally relaxing her grip on her gun enough for a comrade to lift it from her fingers with a pen.

Three more officers entered Serena's cell and began to escort Greer out, as quickly as the woman who saved her, could manage.

"Officer Greer?" Serena called out to the other woman. Two plain clothed detectives began to attend to Serena's needs and sat her on the cot. " _Officer Greer_?" She said when the petite, uniformed woman failed to answer her call the first time.

It took all of the strength and some time for the group of women to turn Greer so that the two women could see each other's face.

"I should thank you." Serena said.

Greer screamed.

When she had finished at last she said, "I've worked with both of those men for over five years. I know Joe's brother. I've met Fred's wife." She began to sob uncontrollably. "And now I have to go home this morning and explain to them that I killed them...for _you_." Pam's head lowered in shame. "I killed these men because of you. So... don't...thank...me."

An hour after Officer Pam Greer was escorted out of her cell, Serena watched a half dozen detectives begin to mechanically examine the crime scene. Another group of three detectives took care of her needs. Serena was told by one, who knew his way around a buffet, that they would need a statement before the FBI arrived and took over the investigation. Her appearance in front of the Judge would be postponed for at least a day now, maybe two. She also was told that she had to refrain from showering until medical personnel could examine her.

Two hours later after she had made her statement, showered and changed, Serena lay on the tiled floor of a new cell with one window high above, and traded local law enforcement for a team of federal agents who were tasked at guarding her this time.

Serena shivered.

Behind her, rays of sunlight were glowing from the window. She wanted to warm herself, yet she remembered that once someone very dear to her saying that beams of sunlight radiating throughout small pockets of space, like in this room, were like the eyes of God piercing through. And that the guilty shied away from this light for fear of His judgment raining upon them.

If she didn't believe it the human deity...then why was she so... _hesitant_...Perhaps he did exist after all?

She crawled backwards, lay in the trail of the light and let God's judgment rain upon her.
Xavier

**Calhoun State Prison (Delta Corridor) 5** th **Day**

"So deep down, at least a part of you knew that Julian would do something like this all along?"

Warden Donald Bright's blonde hair had darkened with sweat and his cheeks had reddened into a fine color of cinnamon. The entire search party: Xavier Prince, Warden Bright, Rose Dixon and two other uniformed were winded after a trek up to the sixth floor produced empty results. All five of Carter's men had escaped with many of the inmates on that level when A Riot's Last Gleaming started.

Xavier kept walking and didn't provide a response. Warden Bright quickened his pace and circled in front of the smaller man and blocked his path. Prince drunkard eyes flashed him a look or irritation. _We don't have time for this_. "Alright, Warden...so I _guessed_ that he would." Xavier cut his eyes at Rose Dixon who was hanging on every word exchanged between the two men.

Warden Bright caught his silent messaging. "Ah...Rose, take these two men and begin a search of the southwest block. When I studied the diagram of this place, I saw some isolated points over there that might provide a man some hiding spots." He pointed a finger at her. "Tell no one any specifics of what you are searching for."

After this search party had concluded their meeting with Julian, Warden Bright had gone alone to speak with representatives of both the Georgia State Police and the National Guard. They had agreed, at least for now, to abide by his wishes and provide tactical support and a perimeter defense and not allow any convict to leave the interior of the prison itself. Bright told Xavier that they were on a time frame of two or three hours, no more, to bring this matter to a head. The woman who led the Georgia State Patrol assemblage told him that there had been an incident at the courthouse in downtown Atlanta already during Serena Tennyson's arraignment. She wouldn't go into further details with him, but privately mentioned that state couldn't tolerate any more screw-ups.

Rose Dixon hadn't moved. "I won't leave you alone with this man. I don't trust him and either should you, Warden. For all we know, he may have been on this riot business with inmate Moore all along."

Warden Bright squeezed her big hands with some affection and smiled at her, the woman's own overreaction back in the library that nearly cost all of their lives forgiven. "I'll be fine, Rose." He said. "By splitting up, we will cover more ground this way. We need to find Carter's men before Julian's Black Knights get their hands on them. We'll be in a better position to bargain for the hostage's lives if we do."

Rose Dixon reluctantly agreed with a curt nod. After she and the two uniforms vacated the scene Xavier said, "Make no mistake here, Warden, the grievances on the front side of your list are all legitimate. Fain's rule here was a reign in Hell." Xavier stopped to rest and leaned his back against a nearby brick wall. "For the flip side of that paper, I suspected that the opportunity for Julian and his Black Knight's to strike back at Carter's associates would be too great to pass up once he figured I was safely off the premises." He stood up straight again. "You said you want truth from me. Well, the truth is I didn't know the specifics of this plan, or whether there was a plan at all, despite what your bodyguard thinks. I do know that Julian is carrying out his plan the way that I would, if I were in his place."

"Fain, that freaking idiot," Warden Bright spat on the floor. "How could he schedule this inspection, allow any unnecessary civilian passage through this place, especially the day of your scheduled release, knowing how volatile this situation had grown here."

"Did you get a radio off of one those uniformed officers before we left?"

"Shit, I didn't," He peered down the hallway, whistled at two uniforms within a patrol group and commanded that someone fetch him a radio. A bucktoothed sergeant gave Xavier a hard stare, but handed the Warden a radio anyway. Xavier took it and turned to channel four.

"What are you doing, Prince?" The Warden wanted to know. "Who in the hell are you calling?"

"Backup," Xavier grinned. "Julian has his plans. I have mine."

The Warden listened as Xavier disguised his voice, making it darker, richer as if he were of Mexican or Columbian decent and called for a guard named Evans.

Xavier completed a list of commands in Latin.

The man, Evans, on the other end responded in Latin as well, Xavier turned the dial to the off position and handed the radio back to the warden.

Warden Bright was struggling to keep his mouth closed and the look of astonishment off of his brow. "Who was that? What did you tell him?"

"Lieutenant Vincent Evans has been one of the most decorated guards at this and other state facilities for over 25 years. In the past year, however, he has taken the mark of A House in Chains...he has visualized our people's future and wishes to amend what he has saw."

"God, Almighty," Was all the warden could manage. After another second spent in disbelief he asked, "Are you going to share with me what you said to him?"

Xavier looked to each side to make sure the bucktoothed man who had brought the radio had returned to his post and that no other guard was coming. "I instructed Evans to gather up more help...more Peacekeepers, and search every crack and crevice of the western wing of the promenade and the first floor. Carter's men still don't know that I am not leaving per schedule. I would have had to exit through those sectors to complete my processing before my official release."

Yet, Warden Bright only could find the energy, the resolve to rest his bigger frame on the opposite wall from where Xavier had paused only minutes earlier. "How many are there," The Warden asked. "I want you to tell me how many of the state's men—how many of my men share your vision of the future, Prince?"

"Enough," Xavier said and pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. _I need a cigarette_. "What is more important to you right now is that these prison guards know the layout of Calhoun better than Julian and his followers do. And I'm convinced that James Carter's hoods are where I say that they are. But we still have to find them. And whether it is because of an itchy trigger finger of one of Julian's Black Knights, or the imminent incursion by The Georgia National Guard and State Police, we are running out of time, Warden."

The warden shrugged. "Did you and Julian come to some type of agreement after I left to speak with the outsiders? Did you two already decide Carter's men's fates before they are even found?"

"We agreed that if I found them first that I would decide their outcome. Those men's lives belong to me in Julian's eyes anyway." Xavier felt the other man glaring down at him "I never told him exactly what I do if I found them first, Bright. But it was the best solution that I could come up with at the time." He said and started to walk again—

The warden grabbed him by the forearm, but as soon as he gained his attention, he aptly let go. "I don't get this. I have to ask you the same question Julian did back in the library...whose side are you on, Prince?" Xavier only answered by swerving the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other. "I believe that horrible tale Julian narrated to the room back in the library. I believe that Carter's men had their sights on killing you later on today as you left the prison. What I don't believe is that you will find these men and simply let them...walk away from all this and potentially anger the Black Knights and allow those hostages to be harmed."

Xavier jumped in the other man's face. Warden Bright must have seen a handful of guards reach for their sidearm and screamed at the men to put their guns away. "I'm not siding with you, Warden." Xavier chewed on the toothpick and willed himself to take a half a step backwards. "I am trying to protect the lives of those civilians who have been threatened, if only partially, in my name. I want to lessen the chances that they will be slaughtered if we don't find Carter's goons first. I'll worry about the ramifications, all the rest, once we've accomplished that much."

"I get it now," Warden Bright said three intersections and down a flight of stairs later. "In truth you don't really give a damn about those civilians. This is all about you. This is about politics and protecting the image of your precious little House in Chains."

Xavier snorted. "Of course, politics plays a role in every decision I make, Warden. You work in a governing position. You should know this." He ran a hand through his short mane of hair, forcing himself to remain calm. They had loss enough time as it was. "Militant behavior should never be the first option for A House in Chains. My father taught me that when he was the One. He taught his followers to exhaust any and all other avenues before we turn to violence."

"And your friend, Julian Moore, I don't think all of the skulls and crossbones tattooed to his body comfort me into believing he shares you or your father's views."

"Julian's been a gang banger for as long as he can remember." Xavier admitted to the other man. "The stories he told me...he fights, he kills, and he does these things because he hasn't learned how to do anything else. I will tell you that he has grown at least a little bit, because if he had not, then those hostages up there would already be dead." It was Xavier's turn to grab the warden's wrist, but only to check the time on his watch. "Warden, we need to move. We have unexpected allies, but time is not on our side."

"I know...but..." The warden placed a hand on each hip and shook his head in disbelief.

"What?"

"Like I told you in my office earlier, I've been in this game a long time and I thought that I've saw it all. I've seen men find truth and clarity locked inside these walls. I've seen men find sorrow for their victims and empathy for the families that have been left behind. I've seen hundreds of men find Jesus—if only because they had nothing else to do while they served out their sentence." Warden Bright said. "And yet, Julian Moore found _you_."

Just then, a stocky guard Xavier hadn't remembered seeing before during his incarceration at Calhoun ran up to them with a rifle in his hand. "Warden Bright, is that you, sir?"

"It is, Sargent." Warden Bright said to the man. "Report,"

"Lieutenant Evans and a group of four or five other officers are engaged in some type of standoff with some unidentified inmates on the promenade. Before I left to find you I saw a cluster of Black Knights closing on the section as well. Julian Moore was with them. If you'll follow me sir..."

When the three of them arrived on the promenade Xavier noted that Evans men, those who had accepted the mark of A House in Chains, had barricaded themselves between Carter's men and Julian's Black Knights who were arriving in force on the scene. One butter ball of man, with his head nearly between his knees gasping for oxygen, had proclaimed that Julian's people had found Carter's men first.

" _Liar_ ," Warden Bright shouted loud enough that every man on this floor knew that he and Xavier had arrived. "These prison officers are friends of A House in Chains. They share Xavier's vision for their people."

Julian walked, ever slowly towards where Warden Bright and Xavier Prince had made their stand. "I don't see it that way, Warden." He grinned for the first time that Xavier could remember since this crisis began. "I do see that my men out number your men, what, four to one— _five_ to one."

Xavier slid smoothly between the warden and Julian Moore. He said: "Stand down, Julian. This is over. You have been a thug. You have been a murderer who has killed without thought or conscious. Don't be a liar as well."

Julian stretched his amazingly large eyes to a full bulge, and Xavier inwardly braced himself to be struck by this gang banger that he had learned to call a friend and an ally in this hell hole.

Julian simply said, "Respect of self, Xavier...respect of family, and finally of community, yes I can recall your words to me as if you said them a minute ago."

"Then stand down, Julian," Xavier placed his right hand on a tattooed shoulder and rubbed at a particular area of skin that showcased the mark of A House in Chains amongst all the other body art. "You told me that if I found Carter's men first and Evans is _my_ man, then we had an agreement that their lives...or deaths as it may be, belong to me."

"I told you that I wasn't worthy of a seat in your house." Julian said in a remorseful tone. "I'm not as strong as you are, Xavier. I can't let go of what was done to you before. I can't push the thought out of my mind when we learned what they were planning to do to you on this day." Julian's voice cracked. "I'm no better than James Carter or these other fools locked up in here. I can't let go of my hate for them."

Xavier hugged the other man then and gave his wiry frame a brotherly squeeze. "I'm here for you, Julian. I'm here. There is no need for you to avenge me. You can't retaliate for a murder that has yet to occur."

Julian returned Xavier's embrace and cried for a long time.

And then he pushed the other man away and cocked his pistol once more.

"You are a great man, Xavier Prince. You are the man that I wish that I could be." He said "But you are wrong today. These men are too dangerous to not to kill here and now."

The Warden moved with the speed and precision that men half his age weren't blessed with. He was a blur. He was a thought. He was a ghost. He snatched a gun out of one of his own men's hands, so that he now possessed two, and drew it on the area where Carter's men had been forced to kneel. He shot and killed three of Carter's men before they had a chance to get to their feet. One of the Black Knights took the aggressive posture of The Warden as if he were acting against Julian and twisted his frame and placed it so he could get a clean shot off at Bright. In his mind's eye, Xavier could picture the lone uniform that had accompanied them down here targeting the gang banger and the remaining Peacekeepers aiming at him. So he used his small stature and strength to get underneath Julian's man just enough to make contact with his elbow, pushing the gun's barrel to the ceiling when the man fired off a round.

Meanwhile, the warden found his fourth target as one of Carter's men had lifted himself off his knees, charged past a Peacekeeper and lunged at Julian. _Time's run out_ , Xavier thought, _everyone within a hundred feet of the promenade had to hear those shots. Soon, this corridor would be overrun with trigger happy Georgia State National Guardsmen and State Patrol Men. God help us all._

Somehow the fifth and final hatemonger had stolen A Peacekeeper's weapon from him, shot the original owner, the man next to him and fired a third round that grazed Xavier's skull.

The bullet had struck the officer who had accompanied him instead, killing the man instantly.

Julian unloaded half a clip into the man, each bullet holding his frame up, so the one behind it could find its mark on the man's torso.

A second or two later, Warden Bright moved like a man on a mission needed to; he instructed Xavier's surviving Peacekeepers to place to place a gun that had been used in the exchange in a dead man's hand. Initially, no one moved so Warden Bright explained again louder but slower in case anyone was having trouble comprehending.

The deed was done as Rose Dixon led a group of nearly uniformed men and women onto the already crowded promenade. She was struggling to catch her breath, but her face brightened when she saw that Donald Bright was very much alive.

"Sir, are you alright, are you hurt?"

"I'm fine, Rose." Warden Bright squeezed the woman's arm. "All of you lower your weapons." He commanded to everyone in the room, Julian's Black Knights in particular. "There are hostages up in the library who are waiting to be freed and a few people here who need medical attention, including myself."

Rose looked around the area at the carnage. Blood had been splattered on the walls and the floors. Xavier had lost his toothpick. "What happened here?" She asked.

Warden Bright pointed in the general direction of the five dead men who once belonged to James Carter and kept emotion of what sounded like a rehearsed answer to Xavier. "These men were operatives of James Carter and perhaps Pandora. They nearly ambushed me and Xavier Prince when we entered this section. Inmate Julian Moore in his Black Knights had already signaled to me that they were prepared to lay down their arms, release the captives and return control of the prison to my control. But they rushed to our aid when they first heard shots down here and Julian Moore killed the last assailant who would have shot me or Prince without his assistance."

Warden Donald Bright let his lies breathe and waited to see if anyone, including Xavier Prince, was stupid enough to deny his claims. Julian Moore swallowed a response he might have made and silently rolled his big eyes at Xavier.

Rose couldn't stop shaking her head. "I never should have left you, sir."

"There are plenty of questions that could use answers, Rose. I'm sure you don't envy the report that I'll have to write on this one." His smile was infectious as Rose and a few others let out a chuckle. Xavier folded his arms instead. _Circumstances dictate that I could never call you a friend, Warden Donald Bright._ He could admire to collective way that the other man carried himself.

The warden and the gang banger stared at each other for a long time. This all wouldn't be truly over, until Julian relinquished his weapon and called on his Black Knights to do the same.

Julian broke eye contact first and headed his gun to the warden, butt end first.

It took less than two hours after that moment to release the hostages from the library where they had been caged like animals, to return the control of Calhoun State Prison to Warden Donald Bright, and have all of the convicts return peacefully to their cells.

All of the convicts save for one, Xavier Prince, the One, the leader of A House in Chains.

He was released into the custody of his two grade school aged boys who had to kneel on the concrete and brace himself as the leap into his arms for an extended embrace in the alley that separated the prison walls from the highway that led far away from here. Both of his children's mothers kept their selves at a polite distance away to allow him the moment with his children. He had never loved either of their mothers, but he had respected both of them more than ever before for their gesture.

As he walked down the alley with a son on each side of him he stopped his walking, to gander at a crowd that was massing at the end of the alley that seemed to be growing in number by the minute—by the second.

He must have seen a thousand People of Color standing there.

He handed his boys off to each of their mothers so they would not be separated in this throng of people. He blew a kiss at each of them and promised that he would be theirs...just theirs in the days to come.

He turned back to the crowd that began chanting his name. He inhaled a deep breath, wished for a cigarette or toothpick for which he had neither...and begun the long walk he'd always been destined to take.

Young kids hopped on the shoulders of adults for a better look at him. Women and even some teenaged girls giggled at him and hugged him and kissed him on his cheeks and jaws as he passed. He was lit up with the light from the flashes of cell phone cameras. Men his age and older waited patiently for their turn to shake his hand, pat him on the shoulder, or speak words of encouragement that the large crowd didn't really allow him to hear.

His walk didn't last as long as he might have imagined. Two very large Peacekeepers, who were dressed in the traditional garb of khaki suits, hoody's and sneakers, plucked his small frame up as if he were a child himself and placed him on their shoulders. He had protested but his cries fell upon deft ears, especially when the crowd saw what was happening and roared louder and louder with their approval.

At long last, the crying out, the singing, the chanting of his name ceased long enough for him to speak to the mass, while he sat high on these other men's shoulders. He asked, "Brothers and sisters, what do you see when you visualize our People's future?"

He heard the mass yell back to him in near unison. "We see days with misery and pain."

With the exception of the two Peacekeepers who continued to hold their leader up high, the crowd broke into the largest cheer so far...and then began to jump up and down in place.

Xavier Prince smiled for them and urged them on. That is what a leader sometimes has to do for his troops, even if he doesn't feel like smiling. He found the four figures of his two boys and their mothers some distance behind them and his smile grew wider and more genuine.

Warden Donald Bright had joined Rose Dixon and several other uniformed prison guards at the foot of the alley. And even at this great distance, Xavier Prince could read the question burrowed on their faces and answered them silently with a look of his own. These People of Color before you are engaging in what we have come to know as the stomp.

It is the ultimate sign of pride, love of our people and cause...and the ultimate act of defiance against all of those who would dare try and hurt us.

Xavier Prince muttered a prayer on his lips that his people's defiance would be enough to save them from what may be coming.
Angel

**Fulton County Courthouse, 5** th **day**

She stumbled, ever so slightly, as she sat down in one of the chairs that encompassed Interrogation Room Number Eight of The Fulton County Courthouse.

Dr. Angel Hick-Dupree had only three shots of Tequila the night before. That wasn't enough to even start feeling _good_. She'd seen a shitload of patients running her practice down in Macon drinking heavier than that and with hours less sleep. She sipped at the mug of black coffee, and it's _was_ just coffee only, she'd keep her word to Agent Sheridan about that part at least, and pulled her chair tight against the table.

She just needed an extra minute or two so she could stop feeling the world would stop spinning on its axis beneath her. _I'll be fine_. _I_ am _fine._

The room was a box shaped, cool, featured a piss poor paint job, and had her friend Special Agent Christopher Prince, Sheridan and Agent Tabitha Blue hidden behind the mirror that served as the classic two way glass like they did in the movies. _I'm sure they're still getting_ _set up back there_. She gathered and then sorted the notes that the FBI wanted her to question Serena Tennyson about when she was brought in. _No one saw my stumble. I'm fine_.

Two female agents followed by two uniformed female officers had escorted the leader of Pandora into the interrogation room. Angel could hear the prisoner's shackles with every final step she had taken before the door swung open and they began to methodically disconnect her from bondage.

The Deputy Director couldn't in his wildest wet dream imagine that his troops would have bagged such a prize, but here Angel was now seated across from her in an orange jumpsuit that mandated that she was an inmate of The Atlanta Justice System. Angel smoothed out her eyebrows, pushed the collar of her silk blouse down into she felt it was perfect, took one last drink of her flavorless black coffee and focused on the moment, as she had always successfully done before. The FBI needed as much Intel as they could about Pandora's current and future operations. It was time for Angel to earn her keep.

"Hello, Angel," Serena initiated the conversation. "How long has it been now... a year...two? I've looked so forward to seeing you again."

_Oh no, Serena, we need to keep this conversation professional, impersonal...and focused on you, at least for now_. "I'll remind you that you have waved your right to be represented by legal counsel at this time."

"I have."

"I will also remind you that anything you tell me, you are sharing that information willingly with representatives of Federal Bureau of Investigations," Angel made a slight inkling of her head to left where the mirror sat on the wall. "And _they_ have representatives present on the other side of that glass."

"I'm fine, Angel." Serena said without looking at the mirror herself.

Angel scanned the other woman's face; she had the slightest discoloration building underneath her eye and some purple bruising on her forehead and a cut by her left ear. The mastermind behind the vicious and cowardly attacks that had killed scores of innocent Atlanta residents deserved to be tried, convicted and even potentially executed for her crimes. _I will_ _gladly pay to reserve a seat at that party._

Still... _no_ woman, not even this one, deserved to be whipped...and nearly raped, especially when she was supposed to be under the protection of the Atlanta legal system. _I know that everyone from Rice to Sheridan to the APD is taking a beating by the media and women's group for the two men's behavior._

And now she and Serena had another bond that tied them together.

Angel reached for her coffee out of habit, the cup lukewarm against her fingertips. Serena matched her movement and swallowed a third of a cup of water in a single gulp. Since the incident Serena has been assigned a shift of four female guards to stay with her at all times. Sheridan shared the report with Angel as she arrived at the courthouse this morning: Serena was eating very little, only the fruits and vegetables that came with her meals. She _was_ consuming water by the gallons. And she was seen muttering prayers from time to time in her cell.

Angel cleared her throat. "Both the FBI and the Atlanta Police Department extend a full-fledged apology for the trauma that you experienced at the hands of state employees." Angel said. "I assure you that either association condones such behavior, in fact it is unacceptable and intolerable in their eyes. A full investigation is taking place, even now as you and I speak."

"It's not your fault, Angel." Serena said quietly.

Angel stole a peek at her associates standing behind the glass. She could imagine Christopher pacing like a caged tiger. Sheridan probably was standing stoic, almost a statue in concentration. And she didn't know Tabitha Blue well enough to give a fair opinion on the younger woman. _Remember to focus, Angel_ , she thought to herself as she planted her two inch heel on the floor.

"I'll share this with you, Serena," Angel leaned close. "It took some prodding to convince the FBI to allow me to conduct this conversation with you, especially considering my short stay in Pandora." Actually, it was Sheridan's idea, but Angels' lying, especially to herself over the years about her booze and her men, flowed so naturally that sometimes she couldn't help herself. "If you have any statements you would like to make, if you have anything meaningful to say to me this would be one hell of a time to start."

"All in good time," Serena sat back in her chair far enough to cross one matchstick of a leg over the other. "How is Thomas Pepper? Are your associates, as you call them, treating him well? And try telling the truth this time."

Angel shifted her feet under the table. "I'm not at liberty to speak about him at this time."

"How deeply do they suspect that he is involved in this?" Serena acknowledged the people behind the mirror for the first time with a quick glance.

"How deep," Angel said in a quick burst of anger. "Eight APD officers and two federal agents died from the result of you having the roads to his townhouse mined during your little visit. He is _snared_ in this, Serena. In so many words you threatened to have black children kidnapped if Xavier Prince and the others in A House in Chains don't disband and turn themselves in." Angel felt a snarl curl on her surgically enhanced lips. "That means you will be involving Louis Keaton, a known pedophile, which also involves... _me_ , because I treated his sickness when he was a patient of mine while I serving under you." Angel got to her feet and made quick circle of the room. She combed her brunette hair with her fingers. "We're all in this thing together. The feds will have to make their decisions to who is truly involved and to what extent."

Serena sat back in her seat in silence. Angel sat back opposite her and examined her facial expression for any sign of...anything. Serena had always been a glacier. Angel had rarely run into anyone that was difficult to gage their emotional state, if at least on an introductory level. That is why Angel had felt that she was reaching Louis Keaton, getting at the core of where his real issues were.

But Serena Tennyson was either asking about Thomas Pepper because she hoped to distract Angel from conducting her interview at her pace and with the subject matter she wanted or did the woman truly has a concern over the man's well-being? Did anyone truly know the extent of the two's relationship? Christopher had told Angel about the shrine Thomas had dedicated to the wall of his spare room. Angel glanced at her wristwatch. _Maybe, they'll get_ _more out of him that I'm getting out of her_. Christopher and Agent Blue should have left from behind the glass by now so that they could conduct their own... _debriefing_ , she wouldn't call it an interrogation, with Thomas Peeper down the hall.

Now it was Serena's turn to lean over...and she locked her long fingers with Angel's.

"Emissary, when have you last had a vision?"

Angel snatched her hand back with such suddenness, with Serena's grip so tight, that the retraction caused the other woman to scratch her enough to draw blood.

Angel grabbed a nearby napkin, dabbed it in Serena's drinking water and put slight pressure on the wound which was clotting already. The truth of the matter was that the doctor wasn't sure what exactly disturbed her more: Was Angel upset that Serena had used her old Pandora call sign that she'd been issued during her brief stint with them, or did this woman somehow know about this dream that Angel had last night?

Angel had dreamed that she was in this same courthouse, sometime in the future she guessed, and she was walking around the building as naked as the day she was born.

What was worse is that she was all alone.

"I hadn't had one in a very long time." Angel lied and if the other woman saw through it then so be it. "I did have nightmares after I saw both People of Color and your Pandora operatives being pulled out of the Fox Theatre. I'll never forget watching the construction crews finding a foot, arm or a severed head form a child at the remains of The Andrew Young Youth Center."

"Perhaps you aren't really sure when the timeline of your nightmare occurs. You think it might be about the present or hope that it was something in your past, when it is truly the future you see." Serena told her. "Operation 411 is over and done with. We are dawning on a new hallmark, a new chapter...The Whirlwind. If The Circle doesn't turn away from their wicked ways then that carnage you saw last night was not a nightmare but a _vision_ and it is not about what has happened but _will_ yet happen."

"You are truly insane, Serena."

"I believe in the power of The Dragon. And my visions never reveal themselves so simply, Angel. In truth, I've never seen you given to the flames. Although I know that we all are given to them eventually." The other woman's voice quieted as if she were in reflection. "But you are headed towards a pain and suffering that will make those days your father left you alone in that camper feel like child's play in comparison."

Angel got in the other woman's face, tired of this game of words between them. "Let's talk about _fathers_ , shall we." Angel pushed a single piece of Serena's red hair that had loosed itself from her bun out of her face. "Your father was a believer in the flames as well. That's where you learned this foolishness from."

"Leave my father out of this." Serena said, her thin lip nearing a quiver.

"We shared stories about our fathers, remember." Angel remembered drinking too much scotch that night. Serena had nursed only on club soda. "A couple of weeks after you took the state title and set a record, if I can recall your tale correctly, in a marathon that your father had attended—"

"Leave my father out of _this_ , Angel." Serena said in a low, dangerous voice that would have frightened most people. Doctor Angel Hicks Dupree wasn't most people.

"Two weeks after you won that marathon, your father had most of his stock options go south on him. He'd lost everything."

"He made a mistake, Angel, but unlike most human beings, he owned up to it."

"He came home from the office," Angel continued as if Serena hadn't spoken at all. "He had decided that it was time to sacrifice his body to the flames."

"He was a brave man—"

"And how brave was your mother, Serena?"

"That... _bitch_...she never believed in Daddy's visions, his callings. She ran like the weakling she was. But Daddy caught her, cornered her."

"Yea, he did, Serena. She'd made it as far to the tool shed out back before he doused her with gallon after gallon of gasoline. And then he struck a match and tossed it at her."

"He did not want her to suffer over time for his mistakes." Serena's eyes had widened to full hilt, and Angel could imagine that the woman sitting across her was no longer the hard leader of Pandora, but the 17 year old girl who watched this entire scene unfold as she observed in horror from the kitchen door.

"He set her ablaze, Serena." Angel sat back in her chair, exhausted as if she had ran one of Serena's marathons for her.

"And then he glanced back at me," Serena said in a reflective voice. "I've often wondered why he didn't come for me as well. Perhaps, it was because the flames had danced their way over to his pants leg and licked at his thighs, his groin...he could have ran but he didn't. The flames had come for him at last and he stood there and let them. I recall it being a slow burn. He screamed in ecstasy. He sacrificed himself so I would be a better person. I will always remember them as flames of disclosure."

"You are truly insane, Serena." Angel said.

"No, I'm being quite reasonable considering the opponents I'm up against." The Serena Tennyson, the hard one who was the leader of Pandora had returned in earnest. "I'm trying to save People of Color from themselves."

"Save it, Serena." Angel spat. "Take another look around you. A House in Chains is not our father's NAACP; they are not our grandfather's Civil Rights Movement. For the past 20 some odd years they have lifted the Black Community to heights never seen in this country's history. Isaac Prince's vision has transcended an entire race. You know better than I do, that their strength comes from their unrelenting resolve...and their _numbers_. A House of Chains got away from the old school mentality of basing their movement around Christianity, Islam, or any other religion. They don't care if you are a smoker or a casual drinker. They accept people into their bosom and value them whether they are rich or poor whether they are college educated or ride on the back of a garbage truck for a living."

Angel got to her feet again, and rounded on the other woman, ending up behind her left ear. "Respect of Person, Serena," Angel said. "For the first time in this country's history, the numbers show that there are more Men of Color enrolled in college than there are in prisons. Respect of family, Serena. Black women having children out of wedlock is at 35 or 40 year low. The divorce rate has been cut in half. Respect of Community, Serena, cases of rape, domestic violence, gun violence, poverty, and drug convictions are all at or near historic lows in what we still consider predominantly black neighborhoods."

"They can still be cruel, unreliable...and uncivilized," Angel imagined that the other woman pictured her two attackers with her doe eyes as the words parted her lips.

"The Great Recession set them back. It set all of us back."

"They are doomed to eventual failure, Angel. I'm trying to save them from themselves. This progress you speak of has come too hard to fast. Isaac Prince's vision was an honorable one. His son and those in The Circle who do his bidding have perverted his father's vision. Even their name, People of Color, speaks to their arrogance."

Angel stooped and wrapped her left arm around Serena. She seemed not to unwelcome the doctor's touch, at least for now. "You're wrong, Serena, it truly speaks to how people of Latino and Asian, and Middle Eastern...and hell, Caucasian people have joined their ranks, have taken the mark. Some government officials estimate that there are 10,000 Peacekeepers in America. This young men and women are drug tested, trained, and eventually set loose on the streets of urban America, taking back neighborhoods from prostitution, corrupt cops, thieves and drug pushers."

"That would be all good and well, Doctor, but remember the threat that is not so subtlety implied at the conclusion of that passage."

She did know it: And when our homes and our Houses are secured at last we will turn our attention to the Rooster, for he must make reparations for all that he has done to us; this is the ultimate Vision of our Future.

"And I guess you mean to stop them by any means necessary." Angel asked her.

"No. I suppose not." And just as Angel's eyes flicked ever hopeful, if Serena Tennyson would turn from this destructive path, she knew Pandora would fall apart. "I'll be dead soon." She peeked over at the mirror on the wall. "They won't let me live much longer."

Twenty minutes after Serena abandoned Angel and the interrogation with for the return of her security detail...and her chains, the doctor watched as Christopher, Agent Sheridan and Agent Blue took her spot in the room that was warming as the afternoon sunshine moved in.

Christopher spoke up first, "I'm a little worried about your safety from reprisals from Pandora, Doc, I think we should have your hotel room monitored at all times moving forward."

"I agree." Blue said. "I think we got a lot of your interview with her, but she is trying to use you the same way she used that reporter down the hall."

Agent Sheridan nodded, but looked a little shaken. "That whole bit about her parent's murder suicide. It was just a footnote in our files...but to hear both of you recanting the story. I think her entire ideology is based on her relationship with him."

"Yea," Christopher agreed. "Her attachment with him and whoever this Caretaker character is partly why we are all in this mess right now."

Angel nodded in her head in agreement. She reached for her coffee cup out of habit; the coolness of the handle reminded her that it was undrinkable for more than just one reason. Her childhood friend and Tabitha excused themselves, anxious for another round at Thomas Pepper, with Chris putting up a phone sign with his hand mutely saying that he would call her later.

Sheridan remained behind. The doctor consciously using the gathering of her paperwork as an excuse to remover herself from his shadow just in case the whiskey betrayed her by leaking through her pores with the perspiration that had built up with the tension of the interview.

Yet, in that same exact moment, Angel decided that she would go out and by bottle or two of gin or whatever else she chose after she left her. She would keep her a small irrelevant stash with her at all times in case the stress became overwhelming. Fuck Sheridan and his expectations. She could function with the booze. She had always functioned with it before, that wouldn't change now. _Damn._ A part of her wished she had listened to her husband, Seth, and stayed home with him and her patients back in Macon.

"Doctor, did you hear me?" Sheridan asked. How long had she been tapped out of it? "I asked you for your professional opinion?"

"I'm sorry, Agent Sheridan, I was reading some of these notes in my file." She said smoothly "What did you say?"

"I asked do you think Serena Tennyson is suicidal."

Angel said, "Before the attempted sexual assault, I would consider the percentages very low to nil. But that kind of thing can break any woman, even a sociopath like the one escorted out here a few minutes ago."

"Even after witnessing what her father did in front of her?"

"In her father's eyes, he failed in his mission of raising and protecting his family when he lost all their money. She's been caught sticking her hand in the cookie jar, but there are still other sweets in the kitchen that she may have an opportunity to grab undetected."

Sheridan smiled at that one. Smiles looked good on the agent. "I can't disagree with your diagnosis, Doctor." He said and the smile still hadn't dissipated yet. "Despite your little tantrum you threw at the Chief Negotiator, I believe you have been helpful so far on this case. Thank you, Doctor."

She felt the first stab of guilt for cursing this man for trying to protect his people and his mission. "That's why I am here, sir." She said, maintaining her distance now more than ever.

"We have a lot going over the next half a day or so. I need that woman alive to answer for all the charges she's facing and the lives she has taken. Tomorrow my concerns shift to someone trying to assonate her out when we transport her out of this facility to Federal Jurisdiction in Virginia. I'm already assigning every available hand I can spare to help with this transition."

Angel halted all of her movement in one motion, as the delayed reaction of what coded message that Serena had said to her before she left. _I'll be dead soon._

What floored her even more is that the doctor believed Serena wanted her to decrypt her message. _They won't leave me to live much longer._

"However many people you are going to assign to this mission, Agent Sheridan it isn't enough."

"Thank you again, Doctor, but I already know that the leader of Pandora is a tempting target for an agent of A House in Chains or even a private citizen and I have planned accordingly."

"I'm not sure that Serena's health is your biggest concern."

"Then spit it out, Doctor what _is_ my biggest concern?"

"She is anticipating an attempt on her life. She is going to use the increased security against your people. Pandora has a stupid codename for everything. I believe they call it Operation Deliverance. Serena is plotting her escape."
Chapter Six

Look, don't get me wrong, Seth Dupree is a brilliant young surgeon. I'm honored to work under his tutelage, but the man seems almost aloof sometimes. He constantly acts like he is distracted or something. And I believe that the _something_ may cost one of his patients his life someday.

-Two male nurses converse during an afternoon break outside the Georgia Dome's Emergency Triage Center Exercise.
Thomas

**The Office of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations, 6** th **Day**

Lindsey Harmon Attorney at Law:

She was a slender former beauty with dark circles loitering underneath her green eyes. She had laugh lines boarding the corners of her mouth she reeked of stale cigarette smoke from her red hair and beige suit.

Thomas Pepper hoped for his sake that she knew her way around the law better than she did the bedroom. _So far, so good_ , he thought, she seemed to be holding her own for round two against both of the FBI agents crowding him in this stuffy interrogation room.

Agent Tabitha Blue was about ten years too young...and by her naked ring finger, too _single_ for his liking, but he couldn't deny the woman had a certain sex appeal. She tried to bury it behind her tough talk and that badge clipped to her hip.

And the fact that she may be attempting to link him to Serna Tennyson and Pandora wasn't enduring him to her either.

"I was speaking to you about time, Agent Blue, especially in light of how much of my client's that you and your partner are wasting with this so called interview with him." Lindsey was giving her hell. "You have Atlanta citizens who have been slaughtered. Our esteemed Mayor has been assassinated. And now, there is some type of unknown threat that has been lodged at the children of this city. My client's home was broken to, he did this interview with Serena Tennyson while fearing for his life, and you two are busy trying to tie him to these terrorist." She paused for effect, her wrinkled finger flicking a pencil back in forth. "Am I missing something here?"

"We're trying to cover all of our bases, Counselor." Agent Blue said. "I'm not sure why he even felt the need to call you at all. We are just having a quiet, civilized conversation."

" _Civilized_ ," Lindsey inhaled audibly and peeked over at Agent Prince who was sitting on the other side of the table, his legs dangling off of the floor. He was playing the role of The Good Cop in this game. "This conversation stopped being _civilized_ , as you say, a long time ago." His attorney used the pencil to flip through her notes and added: "Furthermore, Agent Blue, I see no formal charges lying on this table in front of us. So my client is exercising his rights to exit these proceedings at the time of his choosing. Either we move along to a different line of questioning or we will walk. Have I made myself clear, Lady? "

Blue smiled, highlighting her overbite, reached back, and handed Agent Prince a slim pile of documents. Thomas couldn't see what they were...and not for a lack of trying. Prince scanned them without taking them. If it didn't involve him directly, he would actually find this interplay quite fascinating in fact. Thomas knew hundreds of law enforcement across the country, this good cop/bad copy routine wasn't a new thing to him exactly, but the way it was playing out was something else entirely. Blue and Prince were more along the lines of impatient cop/ distracted cop. Since they'd reentered the room a few minutes ago, Prince had settled for sitting like a hermit on the other side of the table with a look of...preoccupation buried on his dark, hairless brow. He'd even gone as far to ignore two phone calls that had buzzed in his pocket.

"Okay Miss Harmon, you've made your point, let's move on then." Blue dropped those same documents within Lindsey's grasp. Thomas' mouth went dry and he felt a gnawing in his gut. "It has already been established that your client is at least of questionable character and these papers prove it."

"What are these?" His attorney asked.

"The first one is a DUI. The next two are separate disorderly conduct citations."

Thomas hopped out of his seat.

"What is this really about?" He asked. He snatched the papers from Lindsey who was pleading with him with her green eyes to sit back down and let her handle this. "The DUI was in college. I was a kid. These other charges were five and ten years ago."

Blue pushed another sheet of paper with a government letterhead at him. "This audit done by our sister agency, The IRS, was just two years ago."

"Again, that's old news." Lindsey chimed in from her seat. "My firm handled this case—

"And I've paid that money back, with interest." Thomas stuck his hands in his pocket.

"In legal terms this is all ancient history, Agent Blue." Lindsey scratched at the back of her left ear with her fingernail. Thomas knew from past experience that she was getting irritable and needed a cigarette. She gathered all her notes in a pile and rose to leave.

"I do in fact." Blue thumbed methodically through a separate file of papers, sensing his attorney's inpatients, for exactly what she wanted. "And in fact, knowing your client's reputation, this doesn't surprise me a bit. I have a sexual harassment claim against Mr. Pepper by a female columnist he worked with at _The Washington Post_ back in January while they completed an expose."

Thomas found his seat without looking at it, his anger hovering dangerously prevalent near the surface. "We worked jointly on the piece that ran in the paper over four consecutive weeks." He said. "I wasn't in DC for very long."

Blue smiled, "That means you had to work really fast, Thomas. The harassment—"

"The harassment consisted of us going out and having a few drinks...a few sessions. She thought it was the start of something more permanent. She was wrong."

"Thomas Pepper, she filed for divorce from her husband in the short time while you were in Washington."

"Their marriage was already on the rocks, Agent Blue." Thomas rubbed at the two day old beard on his face."

"You'll see two separate files for files of divorce, two more requests for legal separation, and half a dozen claims and counter of claims of domestic battery. That relationship was in shambles. Someone should thank Mr. Pepper for providing a public service by helping to finish sinking a ship that had been treading water." Although Thomas could have lived without her last comment, Lindsey was doing his person and his wallet justice. "We're done here." Lindsey began to rise again.

"One last thing, Counselor," Blue flashed her overbite again. Lindsey bobtailed into her seat, her smoke break denied again. Thomas fluttered in his seat, perspiration building along his thick neck and under his arms.

This time she slid some colored photos at Lindsey. She directed her conversation at Thomas. "After we apprehended Serena Tennyson and started our investigation, we took these pictures inside your townhouse."

The FBI had dozens of pictures of his wall that he had dedicated to Serena Tennyson's likeness. He had magazine clippings, artist renditions, internet postings, and the entire works there now apparently, for the entire world to see.

Lindsey was shaking her head. "What my client does in his place of residence—"

"It's not just these pictures that I want you to see, Counselor." Agent Blue supplied a packet apparently with more photos and dumped the stash on table, so many in fact that many fell to the floor. "This is the picture of the woman in Washington, DC, do you see the resemblance between her and Serena Tennyson. Look at the picture of this woman, Miss Harmon, who Thomas has been seen with socially on his frequent visits back to his hometown in Chicago. Again, the striking resemblance to the woman we have locked up in here."

In the next five minutes Agent Tabitha Blue flashed three more women who shared at least some of Serena's features or characteristics of pastel colored skin, a slim frame, long legs, or red hair...like even the style Lucy Burgess had worn for a time when they first began their affair.

"Even _you_ share some of these features, Miss Harmon?" Agent Blue said as a matter of fact. "You're a smart woman, Counselor. You weren't out of line when you reminded me of what has transpired over the past few days. It is my job to help prevent more atrocities like these from occurring. And part of my job is questioning if this man has deeper ties to the most ruthless woman in the entire world right now?"

"My client is not the subject on your investigation." Lindsey's tone hardened with each word. "Furthermore, his private life, who he sees, who he sleeps with, their marital status, and what these women look like are not your business—"

"It's alright," Thomas squeezed his lawyer's wrist and focused all his attention and energy on Agent Blue. "I'll take this one."

Lindsey was still shaking her head, her green eyes cutting at him, reminding him to tread carefully; there was blood in the water...blood and a hungry shark.

"I'm attracted to Serena Tennyson. The shrine I've dedicated to her in my home speaks to that attraction." Thomas said. "And, in some cases, I have fraternized with women—especially _involved_ women who share some of her features. I am a man who is energized by the prospect of bedding forbidden fruit." _The most immoral of men are often the most honest. They have a clear_ _understanding of who they are_. Mayor Ernestine Johnson had said in truth to him from her dying bed. _They know what they want, and they prepare to sacrifice whatever they feel is necessary, even if it's their very souls, to get what they want_. "Though Serena isn't married, her status in the world makes her the most forbidden fruit of _all_ in my eyes." His own inner voice said wistfully, _you had me pegged correctly, Ernestine, I am indeed an immoral man_.

"But, as you have pointed out, I am not hurting for female company and while I am attracted to Serena, that alone doesn't mean that I subscribe to her religion... " He locked eyes with Christopher Prince, who looked awakened from his stupor. " Or do I share Pandora's view on race relations in this country."

" _That_ , mister, remains to be seen."

"I object to your tone, Agent Blue."

"This isn't a courtroom, Counselor."

"And you are no lawyer and this is not a trial—"

"You're both right," Agent Prince hopped over the table and pushed his way just behind his partner. "Councilor, your client claimed that he wanted to help us save this city, perhaps this country, from any further escalation and bloodshed." He leaned over and caught Thomas eye specifically. "You're our man, Pepper. So help us out of this mess."

Thomas scratched at his beard again and took a deep breath. Blue sat with on the table with her arms folded, while Agent Prince remained standing, his gaze intense. This was the Agent Christopher that Thomas thought that he'd known of, not the unfocused mess he appeared to be earlier. "Serena Tennyson was one of my test subjects that I wrote about in my last book."

Chris nodded. "You did. About 40 percent of your narrative focused on her."

_So you read it, Chris. What I would give to learn your opinions of what I wrote about your brother Xavier and where he has taken A House in Chains during his tenure as the One. "_ My Excel program says that it was closer to 35 percent, but analytics 'are irrelevant to what my overall point is." Thomas said, feeling more comfortable in this type of physiological debate. He almost reached to take his jacket off, and not because he was hot. "The point is that when I write it help to have visuals of that subject matter when I've explaining their background, or expressing an opinion from their point of view."

"That must have been damned convenient for you," Blue tried to hide her overbite by turning away and feign as if she found something more interesting out of the window to look at. "A practiced womanizer has his prized project hoe show up in his living room. And she was naked when we got there. You both were, so you sure as hell hit the jack pot somewhere before The FBI arrived... _to save you_." She made her last words bite, the shark swimming in shallow waters once more.

Lindsey through Thomas a life jacket, "You're toeing a line, Missy,"

"What's wrong, Counselor?" Blue got to her little feet and wailed her tiny arms about. "I'm sure you could extract any information out of any woman you please. I'm just glad that I'm asking you the questions and this isn't happening the other way around." Blue found Lindsey's green eyes. "It looks like we're dealing with a real pro here, a gigolo. Take my advice, honey, you better hold on to your pants."

His lawyer fumed. Blue leaned close enough to both of the seated people in the room that you could smell the peppermint of her breath. "Or is it too late for that already?"

"You're _excused_."

Agent Blue turned on Lindsey. "What did you say to me?"

Lindsey only had eyes for Christopher Prince as she slammed her folder shut. "Either Agent Blue is excused or my client and I are."

Agent Prince lowered his head and let his feet dangle on this side of the table. "Why don't you take a short break, Tabitha, and get yourself a Diet Coke or something."

Blue struggled to close her mouth. She looked from Christopher Prince to Lindsey, to Thomas Pepper, and finally at her partner again. Thomas doesn't need to know the woman on a personal level to see the hurt leaking from her eyes and the twitch of her top lip.

"Yea, something," She said to Agent Prince as she scooped up her files and stomped out of the door slamming it shut behind her.

"Forgive my partner." Agent Prince said in the wake of his partner's exit. "Tabitha Blue's passion is what drives her to excel in her duties as an FBI agent. A high profile case like this one can get the best of you.

"You're wrong, Prince, at least about that last part." He was shaking his head and wasn't sure why. That woman had just tried to bury him. Why should he care about her feelings? "This is personal for her. She's looking for people to blame for the defections that have occurred. She's bitter about your department's shortcomings."

"Shortcomings,"

Lindsey sensed the dangerous tone that Agent Prince's tone was taking. She pushed herself forward into his line of sight, as if to create an artificial wedge between the two men.

"The FBI agents who abandoned this agency—that abandoned _you_ are your responsibility and not mine. All of the reporting that I've done in my interviews and books and have uploaded on my blog is only the facts as they've been presented to me." Thomas said. "You people are not going to crucify me for this."

Prince tried to step through the artificial wedge that Lindsey had created. She stuck her palm into the other man's chest and it stuck there like glue.

She said, "Careful, Agent "Prince. We wouldn't want Thomas to be involved in _another_ harassment suit, would we?"

"Your involvement, as to its extent is yet to be determined." Prince never looked at Thomas' lawyer but eased off her palm just the same. "My people—or what is left of them is trying to understand every aspect of your relationship with Serena Tennyson." He sat in the chair and faced them for the first time. "You better hope to God that you are telling us everything you know."

_If you help me, you will gain enemies on both sides of this conflict. They both will harass you. They will threaten you._ Thomas squeezed the sides of his chair considering Mayor Jonson's words as if she had just spoken aloud.

Lindsey asked, "I assume that we are finished here?"

Agent Prince grunted and nodded his bald head in the general direction of the door without fully looking up. Lindsey thanked him, gathered her belongings, tossed them into her briefcase without bothering to sort them, and snapped it shut. She opened the door for her client and he recognized the expression forming in the laugh lines of her mouth. _I told you that I would handle this. You owe me the remainder of the afternoon. I'm on top._

"Is there anything else you would like to add to your official statement, Thomas?" Agent Prince said, barely audible over the commotion in the hall. "Something, anything that could help us in our fight with Pandora."

"I've told you everything." He lied. He had been working two sources the day before Serena turned up in his living room. He was honoring his promise to Ernestine Johnson about answering the three questions that every Person of Color...including this man he was leaving behind in this interrogation room, wanted to know. "I'm not sure that my information is prudent to your present investigation or not, Chris. More importantly, at least to me, I won't allow you to use my information against me and try to keep me her any longer." Even with Serena Tennyson out of the game, the clock was ticking. He was going to be needed elsewhere.

Just as Thomas Pepper stepped through the threshold another agent nearly collided with him walking in. He was frowned up as if someone had kicked him in the shin. He made his way over to Prince and whispered something in the other man's ear that caused Prince to wince and mutter a curse. He held his index finger up for Thomas and his lawyer to hold up for a sec. Just as quickly the special agent recovered his composure, nodded at the messenger who strutted off and then returned to the room a minute later.

"My apologies for all of the cloak and dagger, sir," The still frowning agent said to Thomas. "But there is someone here who has been waiting to see you, sir."

Thomas felt a pang in his chest and he and Lindsey exchanged a look of anxiety.

Sophie, his Fox Terrier, struts in to the interrogation room.

Thomas kneels his large frame so that his dog and leap easily into his waiting arms. He called her name once and again as if to make himself believe she is here, that all of this is really happening. The Terrier licked unabatedly at the hair on his jaws and cheek, and then finds softer skin...and a tear underneath his right eye.

Lindsey smiled, folded her arms and relaxed her stance and allowed the couple to have their reunion in silence and without interruption.

Special Agent Prince wasn't about to be so kind. "Unfortunately," He said in a grave voice. "You two are the only ones who survived that encounter with Serena Tennyson in your townhouse."

The hallway behind them had been a bustle of foot traffic, but Thomas Pepper noted that wasn't the only reason for the sudden silence hanging in the air.

"What has happened, Agent Prince?" Thomas Pepper finally asked.

"Your housekeeper was found dead in a wooded area about four miles from your residence. She was shot in the head by a high powered rifle." He added, "The Medical Examiner says that the time stamp on the body states that she was killed while you and Serena were conducting your interview."

_So you_ had _come a day early, after all, Eloise,_ _because of the trip you were taking with your husband_. Thomas bit back fresh tears. When Serena had spoken into her communication device on her collar when he mentioned it to her then, he had hoped that they would detain the woman as Serena had told them that Pandora did with Sophie.

Agent Prince was staring into Thomas' blank expression. "Thank you for your time, Miss Harmon. We have your card. Someone will be in contact with you if we feel the need to take any further statements from your client."

Outside Lindsey had walked a still stunned Thomas past the security checkpoint that led out of the courthouse and into an impressive courtyard of vegetation and color. It did stink of smoke and there was the all too familiar haze in the chilly afternoon air. Thomas pulled Sophie closer to his bosom and ducked his head inside of his jacket against a series of quick gust of wind.

Lindsey had her cigarette going and waved it at him in a goodbye. She had received a call on her cell on their walkout that delayed any erotic plans they may have tried to engage in, at least for now. He watched her drive off without before clicking her seat belt.

Thomas latched his own seat belt and was working out the details of an impossible task of securing an eight pound dog in the passenger side one when he noted again how the foot traffic picked up with agents storming out of the building.

He heard the sirens of first responders in the distance. If his ears didn't betray him he thought he could hear a helicopter...and when he glanced towards Fletcher Street, he could see the bird circling around in search of something.

_What is all of this mischief_? He asked himself while he gave Sophie's ear a gentle squeeze and felt his heart sink. _What have you done_ now, _Serena_?

And then he saw Agent Tabitha Blue.

She was legging it for her vehicle in the parking lot as well. She wasn't wearing the near panic look of the other agent's; her expression was more of a subtle focus of singular intensity. He locked Sophie in the car and rushed to greet her before she sat in her Ford.

" _Agent Blue_ ," He asked, pissed that he could be this winded with only a quick sprint across the street. " _What in the hell is going on_? _What's happened_?"

Agent Blue measured her response for a moment. And then she must have decided that telling a civilian, even _this_ civilian wouldn't violate some type of protocol that she was under.

"While we were interviewing you, Serena Tennyson told our resident Clinical Phycologist, Dr. Hicks-Dupree that she wouldn't live long enough to be prosecuted for her crimes against the citizens of Atlanta for the 411 attacks." She said. "It looks as she was right after all."

Thomas felt a lump growing in his throat. Sophie barked at a steady hilt at both of them from across the street.

"What do you mean?" Thomas asked, though he didn't need to exercise his brilliant investigative skills to deduct the possibilities...or the _possibility_ of what happened.

"The brass was concerned that someone may make an attempt on her life when we moved her from here to the DC area in the morning, so Sheridan came up with the idea to decrease those odds by transporting her out today to lessen that risk."

"Go on, Agent Blue,"

"Shots rang out during the second leg of her transportation route." Agent Blue said her overbite clear enough that Thomas Pepper could see her entire upper gum. "It looks as if your little girlfriend is dead."
Chris

**Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue (Street Level), 6** th **Day**

"Serena's _gone_." Angel said after she exited her Land Rover. One other vehicle worked its breaks pulling in a space behind her. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was a bustle of activity with a matrix of blue and red lights traveling in all directions.

" _Damn."_ Special Agent Christopher Prince said. She limped towards him after rounding the SUV from the front side. He felt a tingle of nerves in his neck when she fully entered his line of sight. "Are you alright—"

The doctor peered down at the red blotches on her blouse's tail and her trousers and waved him off, the blood belonging to someone else. A rat faced agent who Chris knew but couldn't put a name to face limped towards the curve as well. Chris noted that fact was news in itself, because the man usually moved about with the careful precision of a Siamese cat—and the blood caked on his bicep and thigh was his own. Chris slammed the passenger side door of the car he'd bummed a ride in and they dodged afternoon traffic to an area of seclusion so the other two could fill him in. He was breathing heavily by the time they'd reached a spot clear of congestion and where they could hear one another without shouting. After this is all over, Chris swore, I'm going to drop these extra pounds.

"Do we have an official time of death?" He asked the agent that he now remembered as Everett, Jimmy Everett.

But it was Angel who shook her head with some emphasis, grabbed both of his wrists and shook them. "You're not _hearing_ me, Christopher." She cocked a brow and her big brown eyes looked hazel in the bright sunlight. "Serena's _gone_. She'd _disappeared._ She's vanished without a trace."

" _What_?"

Angel glanced over her shoulder at Everett and gave him the floor.

"A half a dozen shots rang out in rapid progression." Agent Everett winced in pain and put pressure on his wounded leg. "At least one of the shots appeared to strike the subject, Serena Tennyson, on her temple. One shot each killed all four of her female escorts to either side of her. Either a group of snipers had their timing down to a tee or there is one hell of a single shooter out there."

Chris concentrated on the first part of the other man's sentence. "You said that the shot appeared to hit her?"

"Yea, I was getting to that, sir."

Everett and Angel shared a look until she finally planted a hand on each hip and cocked her brow at him. " _Tell him, Jimmy_."

"Yea, Agent Everett," Chris said. "Tell me."

"In the chaotic mess that ensued we got a call out to the paramedics. Man, I got to tell you, I ain't ever seen so many people scrambling in 50 different directions—at least since President Sweet got killed in Houston. Anyway, as soon as we put Tennyson inside the ambulance I felt a stinger in my arm here and one in my upper leg. "Everett pulled a rag out of trousers and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He grimaced in pain, this spasm worse than the first one. Chris reached a hand out to help him, but the older man waved him off with one of his rat hands.

"I'll live." He said. "Anyway, I look up and my own piece is in my ear and I hear the voice of a man, Agent Feller, a guy I've worked with years telling me that I don't have to die here like the others. He told me to get down, then stay _down_ and I would live long enough to tell my grandchildren about this day, about _Deliverance_. I woke up...I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later with some pretty ass blonde treating my wounds. My gun was lying next to me; I guess he left it there after he bashed me over the head with it."

Pandora had struck at the heart of the FBI again.

Angel took her hands off of her hips and told the two men what she knew. A court reporter had been shot minutes after Serena walked out of her arraignment to get the ball rolling. Yea, Pandora used that distraction to throw us off our guards. She then said that an APD Deputy who was assigned for secondary support was shot in the back of the head and killed. Pandora went out of their way to strike behind where Serena was leaving a trail.

Agent Everett added that he guessed that Serena had her people lined up in strategic points all along her escape routes. It was going to be difficult to concentrate on retrieving her if you were ducking and dodging gunfire or potential gunfire.

Chris had heard on one of the deputy's radios that a car that had appeared to have been stolen had driven up three floors at top speeds, dodging other parked cars and some civilian foot traffic. Chris hadn't known what to make of that news at that time and still was trying to put the puzzle piece in place even now. Everett didn't make that process any easier when he picked up where he left off, saying that Serena fled down the seven floors to ground level where two more deputies were found dead.

Why would she flee by driving up in the garage only to take longer to reach an intended spot by running back down?

Agent Christopher Prince let the puzzle hang there unsolved and peered as far as his vision would allow him down Martin Luther King Jr, thankful that the usual smoky haze had cleared, at least for now. _I'll take that as a good sign of things to come_. King fed into the busy side street of Piedmont, which crossed Peachtree and led to both I 75 and I 85. If she made it to either interstate it was no telling how far she could have driven by now.

Chris' cell phone, the one he reserved for bureau business only buzzed in his pocket.

Sheridan:

" _Agent Prince, I don't know how she got this far, this fast, but Tennyson's been spotted heading northwest along Centennial Olympic Park Drive in a Carolina blue van. You would have thought she would be smart enough to pick a more anonymous color for her getaway vehicle. I am in a copter. We are in hot pursuit_."

Chris asked, "Is she driving?"

" _It looks as if she has a male escort, but that is unconfirmed."_ Sheridan said with some apprehension. Chris knew how much it pained the man to speculate. " _Tell Dr. Hicks-Dupree that she was right. I should have listened to her."_

Chris disconnected from the call without questioning Angel about whatever conversation she had with Sheridan, but it must have been a doozy. Sheridan gave compliments nearly as often as he speculated on events transpiring in cases.

"You did listen to me, Sheridan," Angel was hugging her shoulders and speaking in a low voice. "We were convinced that Pandora had committed their selves to a rescue operation for Serena's scheduled move tomorrow morning. So we upped it up to today to minimize the risk."

"Damn," Was all Chris could add to that.

Angel went on and quickly summarized the first part of her conversation with Sheridan. The doctor told Chris about the several oddities in Serena's behavior after her interview with her this morning. Chris had attended part of that meeting before he and Blue left to meet with Thomas Pepper.

"I understand all that, Angel." Chris said after he let his old friend have her say, and for the first time he got a whiff of her. _You can't leave that stuff alone can you, Doc._ "Maybe I'm just missing you or Sheridan's point about something. None of this tells me how you knew she would try to escape?"

"I didn't, Christopher, not really." Angel said. "She kept going on about the coming escalation of tensions between Pandora and A House in Chains, about Where are our Children. I just guessed that it was all too big for her to just sit it out."

Two paramedics arrived and sat Agent Everett down and begin to treat the man's wounds. Chris and Angel waved their goodbyes to him and hop into Angel's rental, Chris planting his big ass in the Land Cruisers driver side seat, thankful for the space. Before Angel can slam her heavy door shut, his cell phone buzzes in his pocket again.

" _What_?" Chris yelled into the receiver. "That can't be right."

After they lock their seatbelts in place, he began high tailing it in a northern to northwesterly direction. Angel poked her lips out at him wondering what was said. He shakes his head and hits up Sheridan on the speed dial.

" _Negative, Prince_." Sheridan said. " _You're information is in error. I'm still riding shotgun in the helicopter as we speak. I have a confirmed visual of the fugitive. There are half a dozen APD and three or four of our own people who are in a high speed pursuit of Serena and her companion as we speak. In fact, all mentioned have just crossed the Andrew Young Parkway."_

"That's impossible, sir. I've just received verification that she's on Magnum Street near Chapel Road, being slowed considerably by traffic." Chris smiled over at Angel. "Thank God for the general snarl of metro traffic and specifically for The Atlanta Marathon that's underway today. I should be in visual range of her in 15 minutes."

Sheridan wasn't convinced. " _You're Intel is wrong, Prince. I'm looking through my binoculars right now. The fugitive has the same red hair, the same orange jumpsuit_." He paused and Chris could only guess that he found something in that vehicle that got even more of his attention. " _She's picked up some sunglasses along the way, probably lifted them off a deputy that her people killed during her escape_."

"Why don't we catch both of these people to be sure?"

" _You're on, Prince_ ," In his minds eye, Chris could feel the other man's smile, albeit a brief one, through the line. " _Looser buys a steak."_

In the minute after he disconnects Special Agent Christopher gets two calls:

He scanned the face of his personal cell. It is Doctor Phelps, his personal physician calling him again. _Damn, this man has lousy timing_. So far he had called him when he was still a captive inside of the Fox Theatre during the siege, called him again an hour earlier when he and Blue were playing tag interviewing Thomas Pepper, and now he was ringing him up at this inopportune time.

Chris lets the phone ring itself out without answering.

Almost immediately after his personal phone stopped its chiming, his business line buzzed in his pocket again. Angel reached over and quickly helped him hook up his Bluetooth and the speaker.

It was Tabitha Blue:

"I'm a little busy, Tabitha." He darted around a Volkswagen that stopped in the middle of the street. "What's up?"

" _Put what you're doing down and get your ass over to Baker Street near the Hyatt Regency."_ Blue said. " _I've got Parson's with me, Witten in a car in front of me and Whitehead_ _tailgating to freaking close behind_. _We're closing in on Tennyson. She's driving a stolen_ _Mercedes Benz_." And she rattled off the license plate number, Blue being Blue.

Angel looked at Chris. "How could that be?"

Chris answered his old friend only by hitting the gas, maneuvering around several cars, the pressure mounting in his head and his gut. He only had the slightest error in driving to make and an innocent civilian could be killed with this light tank he was driving at 80 and 90 miles per hour.

The car that had been described to him, an older model Buick Impala, was now in his line of site. The pressures in both his head and gut ceased to exist as his adrenaline kicked in, the feeling that only people who did this type of work would understand. He swung in, making the slightest adjustment on his route, and fit the Big Land Cruiser right in behind Serena.

"That can't be, Tabitha," Chris finally told his partner. She'd been quiet herself, their own pursuit of... _whoever_ , tightening her focus. "I'm on her tail right now."

" _Shit,"_

"What is it, what's wrong," Chris said to his dash board. "Talk to me, Agent Blue."

Chris stole a look at Angel then focused on the rear headlights of the Buick in front his trying to escape his pursuit. He guessed he was wrong about only people in his line of work getting that adrenaline rush. _I see that Clinical Psychologist get it as well_. In fact his old friend appeared to be having the time of her life.

" _Sorry Chris,_ _Tennyson struck another vehicle and blew a tire_." Blue said at last. " _She's one lucky, bitch though. The way that car banked, she should have flipped it over. Damn, she's out. Tennyson is out of the Mercedes and is on foot. I've got to go, Prince. I've got to_ —"

"Tabitha, _wait_ ," Chris was greeted a click and then the long tone of a dead line. He found solace in Angel's company. "Damn, Angel, what is going on? It's like we're chasing ghost, like we're after a fleet full of fugitives."

Another call comes in on his business line.

Agent Sheridan:

" _Prince, Agent Prince, can you hear me_?"

The line went dead. Angel find's Sheridan's number for him and hit's the speed dial again...and then a third time. They were getting nothing but a garbled signal for their efforts, damned cell phones.

" _Prince, are you there_?"

"Sheridan," Chris had thought the last connection had been severed. "We got a bad cell. Sheridan—"

The other man said, " _Stop yelling, Prince. I can hear you. Listen, my suspect went head on with a civilian in a F150. I think both drivers are dead, but Tennyson is one tough hombre, though. She's out of her car...wobbling, but on her feet. Several APD squad cars are dodging a pile up the wreck caused and are closing in. Wait...now she's running again—"_

Prince made another sharp turn of Northside Avenue staying on his suspect's heels. "Somebody's playing games, Sheridan. I've talked with Agent Blue. She's miles away from either of our pursuits and claims that she has Serena in her sights as well."

If his superior heard Chris last transmission he'd acknowledged it in silence. Chris gave both of then the necessary time and space to fully focus on what transpiring in both of their theatre of operations in real time.

" _Those half a dozen squad cars I was telling you about have quit fighting to drive through the log jam."_ Sheridan announced as if he were doing play by play. " _They are out of their cars and are continuing the pursuit on foot. She's injured. She won't escape us now_."

Chris watched as their Serena caused one civilian and one taxi driver to hit one another while evading the collision with her Buick. He didn't think that the wreck caused an immediate fatality, but he couldn't be certain. Angel nearly stood up to get a better view of it as they left the accident behind them.

"Hold on," He warned her.

He banked again, to the left this time, shadowing her car's movements and heard both vehicles' tires screech in loud protest.

" _Watch out, Chris_ ," Angel said and grabbed onto his arm for dear life.

Chris used all of his training, his timing, his strength in his right arm...and a bit of luck to avoid a clan of pedestrians who had just peeled off a sidewalk. He straightened the rental back out and pounded the gas as he had lost ground on Serena, but had her Buick still well in his sight.

" _Watch out for what, Dr. Hicks-Dupree_ ," Blue said through the speaker. In all of the commotion and near fatal crash, Angel must have dialed Tabitha. He sat straight up in his seat, checked on Angel who had lost some of her coloring, and adjusted the mirrors more to his liking. In one of those mirrors he could see the pedestrians who almost lost their lives throwing their fists in the area, their mouths moving in what Chris thought were swears and curses.

"Blue," He said. "What's your status?"

" _Tennyson bolted for an old, abandoned beauty shop. She's surrounded. I should have something positive to report—"_

This time Chris heard the cell beep. He told his partner to hold that thought.

Sheridan: " _Goddamn,"_ He said. " _Agent Prince, are you there_?"

"I'm here, sir, tell me you got her."

" _Yea_ ," He said, but his lack of enthusiasm spelled trouble. Chris just knew it. " _I'm on the_ _ground now. Yea, we got something, alright, we got a goddamned body double_."

"What?" Angel asked.

"Please say that again, sir." Chris slowed the Land Cruiser enough to bend the SUV around a sharp curve as Serena had. "Would you care to elaborate?"

Sheridan snorted. " _It's an imposter. It's a woman who has the same exact build as our fugitive. She tried to kill herself when we approached her_."

Angel cocked a brow at Chris but her question was intended for Sheridan.

"She tried to kill herself? What does that mean exactly?"

" _Her gunned jammed as she fired a round_." Sheridan snorted again. " _She meant business too, had half the barrel in her mouth. We do have her in custody. I hope to God you are in pursuit of the real Serena Tennyson, Agent Prince. I've got plenty of room on my credit card for those steaks we talked about."_

"Maybe...the next time I call you, I will make sure to have something to report one way or the other."

After Angel disconnected for him Agent Christopher Prince threw all of his concentration on the Buick still ducking and dodging their pursuit. The Bluetooth lit up again; Angel threw the call on to the speaker.

Blue said: " _Someone piss on me_."

"Agent Blue, calm down and report."

" _Yes, sir,"_ Chris could hear her muttering 1...2...3... " _We have a dead man dressed in a wig. And I ain't kidding when I say that he could really go for being a female, you know the_ _slight build, and nearly no body hair save the wig, skin smoother than mine, he really looks the part at a distance."_ She struggled to keep admiration out of her tone. " _We didn't get to question her, ah mean him, though. He killed—"_

"He killed himself." Angel said. Chris pounded the steering wheel in frustration. "We know, Agent Blue."

Blue added: " _Yea, he did just that, Doctor. He pulled out his gun just after we had him surrounded, we all got defensive, but before anyone could get their own piece out he suck that thing halfway in his mouth and ate one. His brains are still oozing down the nearby wall right now."_

Chris instructed Angel to disconnect the line with a finality that said that he wasn't taking any more calls.

"What are you planning to do, Christopher?"

"It's time for this pursuit to end. If both these vehicles continue at this velocity we're going to get some poor civilian killed."

Angel nodded in agreement.

Then she saw him almost bracing himself and giving her the slightest look that she had better do the same. She flashed him a very wicked smile. "Go ahead; be my guest, Christopher, I signed up for the rental car's insurance."

Chris pressed the gas pedal to the floor and rams Serena's Buick just as she was readying the car for a turn. Oh, no, he wasn't expecting her to bank as such a drastic angle and at such a great speed when he struck her car.

Chris hit the brakes, but either he or Angel can take their eyes off of Serena's two ton spinning wheel of a car that turned over...and over...and... _over_ one final time before it settled on its crushed top.

They hopped out of the Land Cruiser as quickly as seatbelts and doors would allow them to. They had to side wind around a handful of metallic pieces of what was left of the Impala. Yet, considering all of today's actions, neither Special Agent nor Clinical Phycologist were taking any chances as they both slow their pace as they reach the car. Chris was comforted, at least some, by knowing that Angel is professionally licensed to carry a concealed weapon. What does concern him is in the matter that she has taken two lives already and may be itching at the bit to add a third to her list.

He could hear sirens arriving in the backdrop.

They both saw a detached red wig that had begun blowing down the street. A woman who could have been Serena Tennyson in another life had part of that slim body inside the car...while the rest was outside buried beneath the Buick.

"It's not her, Christopher." Angel's announcement, however obvious, had finalized the little episode with a loss for the good guys. She put her weapon away and let her hair blow in the breeze for a second. "It's just another goddamned double. This was just another part of the ruse and we fell for it, hook, line, and sinker."

"It's more than that, Doc," Chris said quietly. "This whole thing is far worse right now than anyone would imagine."

A host of FBI agents, APD uniforms and first responder units came on the scene in a rainbow of red and blue color. A helicopter soon joined the mass and Chris assumed it was Sheridan sitting on the co-pilot's side. Out in the distance he could see the first round of news trucks form many local affiliates entering the area as well.

On the other side of the road, two dozen or so marathoners slowed to a jog, passing through the scene losing focus from their race. The sight of the joggers, and the potential of injury or death they avoided, might have been the only positive that he could have found in the past 10 or 15 minutes of his life.

Angel seemed to eyeing the media trucks exclusively as she brushed her brunette hair out of her eyes. "To them, and more importantly to the public, this whole thing is going to make the bureau look incompetent at best, negligent at worst in Serena's entire handling." Angel had a thing for stating the obvious. "And the repercussions of this aren't likely to blow over anytime soon."

Chris leaned up against the wrecked Buick. "It's far worse that just that, Doc," He thought he might trade one obvious statement for another. "We already know from Agent Everett that several FBI Agents were involved. They betrayed their agency, their country by helping a known terrorist escape."

Chris stooped to the ground where the upper part of the body of this double was lying very dead. He peered into her bloodshot eyes that hadn't shut.

"Her death was an accident, Christopher." Angel placed a hand on each of his shoulders and gave them a squeeze. "I saw the look on your face when she made that sudden turn just as you attempted to ram her. You were trying to save lives." She said and both looked up long enough to catch the final glimpses of the marathon runners as they jogged out of sight into the building haze of a late afternoon. "It was a clean maneuver. Everything you did was by the book."

_I know you should be released by now, baby brother. On a personal and family level, I couldn't feel better, especially you being reunited with my nephews again. They've missed you._ He took a deep breath and realized instantly how bad that decision was considering how fast this smoky haze was blowing in from the West. _Yet, as a professional law enforcement officer, your presence on the streets makes my job all the harder._ Chris had already seen first-hand what a member of the Circle could do. And he put it in his report to Sheridan after he'd let the cobwebs dissipate a day or so later. A House in Chains and Pandora are like giants in the playground. He took one final look at the dead Serena Tennyson and got to his feet. And everyone else isn't anything but ants getting stepped on your march towards war with one another.

He knew there was only way for this to end before that evadible clash.

He would have to take a giant down.

He walked back towards the Land Cruiser without looking back at his childhood friend. He had a renewed purpose—and a new mission.

He decided right then that if he had the chance to kill Serena Tennyson—shield or no shield that was what he was going to do.
Louis

**I-285 East (Emergency Lane), 6** th **Day**

He heard someone coming up from behind him.

He dared peer over his right shoulder, the passenger side of his pickup truck in full view.

A voice:

"Turn your head back around. Do not look at me. Do not say anything. I want you to put the key in the ignition, start this old heap up, put the transmission in gear and drive."

Louis wanted to obey. He really wanted to. But he could hear the helicopters flying in the distance to take him away...far away. And anyway, his hands were trembling and he was so very cold, yet he was beginning to sweat along his forehead and underneath his armpits.

He managed to get the old girl's engine going after the second try and he and... _she_ were underway. He gazed one final time into his driver side mirror and found the strength to put his boot to the gas pedal and pull the pickup truck onto the highway. At least Elvis Pressley was swooning an oldie but goodie on the classic rock station, the familiarity of the king's lyrics sooth him almost to the point of relaxation.

Serena Tennyson reached out and switched the radio to one of those 24 hour news channels.

"Watch your speed." She said

_Fuck you, lady._ The voice inside him said.

She grabbed one of the bottled waters from the packs on the passenger side floorboard and downed half of it in a single gulp. She was wearing a gray sweat suit on top of the orange prison garb they issued you at the courthouse. He could only imagine what fate befell the woman who had owned the sweat suit when this day had started.

"Serena," Louis took the off ramp at Hudson. He remembered that this point right here, right now passed an important threshold for their escape, Serena's _Deliverance_. "How did you make it here? All of the reports coming on the radio said that you'd been shot. How did you escape?"

She wiped the spilled portion from her mouth with the back of her hand...and were those tears seeping out the corner of her eyes? She still didn't answer at first, but when she did, she told Louis a grand tale that was full of treachery, deceit, betrayal and finally, murder. The final leg of it found her falling in with the marathon participants and running right past Special Agent Christopher Prince and the traitor Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree after they had rear-ended and killed one of her body doubles. She had said to him that she was sure that all eight of the brave men and women who had sacrificed their selves for her cause were either dead or in custody by now.

Inside of him, Hugh Keaton giggled. _You have to admire her attention to detail, and the tenacious way she goes about goes about her business._

Twenty minutes and no disruptions later they arrived at a wooded area in the western suburbs of Cobb County. Louis could hear his boots crunching the leaves beneath his boot as he stepped down out of the pickup truck. He hurried as fast as his little legs can take him and opened the heavy door for his leader, ever the gentleman. _We are far from being a gentleman. And this wench is your leader, not ours. The sooner we learn that the better we all will be._

When Serena opened the door to the cabin, a dozen or so Pandora agents greeted her as she stepped inside.

Serena took a step or two forward, Louis shadowing her footsteps like a grim reaper. The applause for their leader was long and thunderous enough to shake the foundation. They continued the cheering, the whistling, and the clapping of hands until they realize their efforts are wasted on her. Serena had yet to look up from the wooden floor, not to speak of not meeting or acknowledged that anyone had come here to greet her at all.

Unsmiling, Serena finally looked up and took in her surroundings even before she acknowledged the people who occupy the space in this cabin which is too small a space for all of these folks in the first place.

She hadn't smiled once. In fact, her thin pale jaws looked as if they might swell up and burst in anger at any given minute. The leader of Pandora continued to peer around in silence. Louis noticed the buckets of Champaign chilling on ice, finger sandwiches resting on a tray waiting to be consumed, and brownies are lined up smartly on a coffee table.

Serena hugged herself, and for a second Louis thought the woman would fall where she once stood if she hadn't had a wall to lean against.

" _Whose idea was this_ ," Serena said in a dangerous voice and scanned the room pointing out potential suspects along the way. "I want to see a hand. I want a name. I want it right now or there will be hell to pay for all of you."

No one volunteered to breathe, yet alone take the leap of faith by stepping forward and perhaps incurring the wrath of the Oracle.

No one dared take the leap except a pale, petite woman who wore her hair in a single braid that ran the length of her spine. She was dressed in black; she was _always_ dressed in black.

Danielle Rohm dared to smile and pointed a skinny finger over her own head. "It was me, Serena. I take full responsibility for this."

Serena left Louis' petite shadow for Rohm's. Some of the other agents looked at each other with anxiety budding on their faces, while others seem to stop breathing at all. Louis turned away but Hugh twisted his head back from which it came. _We want to see this_. Serena had been known to be hard, but could she be cruel as well—

"Then it is you that I should thank, Rohm." Serena said to the younger woman, and then raised her head and voice at last for all of the Pandora operatives to hear her. "Thank you _all_...it feels...wonderful to be amongst all of you again."

Pandora celebrated well into the night. Louis even saw Serena set one of her water bottles aside and accept a glass of Champaign that she nursed for thirty minutes before her glass was empty at last. Rohm drank enough for the both of them and it gave her enough courage to lift her small frame on her toes and hug Serena around her neck. Serena only hesitated a second...her _discomfort_ with another human being's touch lessening. She finally ran a hand along the small of Rohm's back in small token of affection. Both women thought that Louis was out of hearing range when Rohm said, "He survived another of your test, when you had him meet you at the congregation point."

Serena nodded in agreement.

The other operatives laughed and ate and drank mostly among themselves. They chatted about how the day had went, the battle won. Rohm had bragged about her half a dozen kills that had originally sprung Serena from her captives. A second voice patted her on her shoulder commenting that he'd never seen shooting like that. A last voice laughed about how incompetent the APD were and how inept the FBI was as they followed the doubles in all directions through the city.

And then Serena hushed them long enough for one and all to raise a glass in tribute to the fallen. She called each by name and thanked them for their service and for honoring the cause...and honoring her.

Louis did not raise a glass with them.

Two hours later, when the late night full moon watched him from overhead, Serena came to him as he knew she would. He was seated on the back step of the cabin watching the taillights of the last of the operatives leaving for wherever their lives took them next. There were three rooms in the cabin and Louis knew that Danielle Rohm had stayed behind to sleep off the alcohol and to stay close to their leader if her services were needed in the remote chances that either the bureau or Xavier Prince's people found her here. _And you stayed behind, Dragon Woman to keep an eye on us._

Louis felt the step give a little as Pandora's leader sat next to him. He could feel her thigh and hip graze his own leg. He had a woman once. Even now, well over 40 years later, he still hadn't understood what all of the fuss was all about. We're sure this type of intimacy would excite an operative or...three that have already left the party

But he had a hunger for a different type of flesh.

And our need to feed grows with every passing minute, Serena. Feed us...feed us again as you promised that you would.

Still, there was a glow on her skin that hadn't existed before, or perhaps it was just the moonlight. She'd washed her hair and the red came through bright and clear as she combed it out. Something was different about her. Something had changed. What happened to you while you were away from us, Serena? Louis knew about the attempted rape...he knew all about rape...yes, he did.

Still again, she was still Serena Tennyson. She was the Oracle. She was still hard, but something or someone had softened her around her edges at least. Louis didn't know exactly what any of this meant for Pandora...or for him.

He realized that he'd been staring at her this entire time without blinking.

"I don't have to explain to you how important your role is in the coming days." She said. "So many have sacrificed so much for us to be where we are right now, here, in our rightful place, leading others."

He tried to nod, but could not find the strength.

She saw his weakness. She pulled out a cell phone out of her housecoat's pocket. "There is something that I want you to see." The cell phone came to life. She pressed a button and a video began playing...and although Louis Keaton had never met this man on the cell phone's screen, he certainly knew his face.

"I'm Thomas Pepper," He hesitated for a very long time while the camera panned out from his face to the familiar surroundings of his townhouse's basement where he recorded these videos for his blog. Serena must have recognized the studio immediately. "And my demise has been greatly exaggerated." Louis thought that he heard a giggle...and yes, there were children, four of them to be exact, sitting on either side of the journalist. There was a little black boy, another boy of Latino descent...Louis couldn't be sure, and two girls, one white and another of Chinese or Japanese ancestry. None of the children were older than ten years old.

They looked _delectable_...especially the boys. Louis twisted in his seat so Serena wouldn't see the stiffening in his groin.

Thomas Pepper was saying: "I vow and affirm not to speak in any public form again until I deliver the truths that I promised our Mayor, Ernestine Johnson before her untimely death several days ago.

"I invited these little ones here today as a reminder to us all that when we speak of the future, these are the ones that we are leaving it to. And when I look into their faces, I know that there is a God. I may not serve him as I should...but I know that He is there. And His spirit reminds me that their hearts are so naturally pure and so innocent that it is we and only we adults who teach them to hate one another." Pepper's tone turned dark. "How dare we teach them guidelines and rules that we adults ourselves are either too arrogant or too stupid to adhere to."

Thomas Pepper took a breath. The little Asian boy became unruly for a minute. Thomas let the moment and the boy settle down again. "Those before us had Pearl Harbor and the JFK shooting. We have the 911 attacks. And now this generation has the Andrew Young Center and the Fox Theatre and...Deliverance.

"All of us have been raised in madness."

The camera followed him as he stood. "I wonder how much longer before A House in Chains sees this future of sadness and pain that they've visualized for so long. I question how many more days will pass before Pandora unleashes its Whirlwind on us all.

"I hope that Xavier Prince walks away from this impending disaster. I pray that Serena Tennyson will turn away from prophecy." Serena seemed to squirm in her seat as the man's last words passed through his lips.

"And I hope never to ask the question: Where are our Children?" It was now time for Louis Keaton to shift uneasily in his seat.

He concluded by saying: "My name is Thomas Pepper, where I go—"

Serena silenced the cell phone. "You've trained for this moment, Louis." She said to him. "You're ready for this moment, Louis."

"No...I'm not." The tears fell without preamble. He shook his head violently and put his head between his knees, his manhood stiffer than he could ever remember. And he was unable to hide it.

He turned to expose them both to her. "But I won't fail you, Serena. Thomas Pepper dares speak of God. We are the truth and the light. And while no man knew the day or the hour of our return, we at long last, have come back for the children.

And now the dust was settling on Deliverance and the _Rapture_ would rise with the dawn.
Episode 3 Rapture  
Chapter Seven

Deep down I know that I shouldn't feel this way about him. I know that it isn't right. But sometimes...well, sometimes I wish that Chris was _dead,_ mamma. I wish that it could be just me and you again.

- _12 year old Erica Lovings' conversation with her mother Denise Prince, in 2004_
Chris

**Parker's Soul Food Restaurant, 10** th **Avenue, 8** th **Day**

Denise Prince:

She was a brown skinned Person of Color who had an hour glass shape. She had light hazel eyes, high cheek bones and wore her curly hair weave to her shoulders. He had always loved a how creative his ex-wife could be with her hair. Today she wore streaks of auburn and chestnut tinted strands that highlighted the color in her eyes. She was 35 years old, four years his junior, and was drawing her usual attention from male passerby's, even dressed in hospital fatigues. He watched her slide into one of the last available booths inside Parker's Real Soul Food Restaurant and then sat on the opposite side of her.

40 minutes later Denise was working on her last piece of today's special, baby back ribs which had looked tasty and smelled better. Special Agent Christopher Prince stabbed at the one of his two chunks of grilled chicken from his salad. Parker's had been around since he'd been a kid. No one in the Deep South did soul food better... _but grilled chicken salad doesn't quite fit_ _the bill as soul food now does it?_ If the life and death episodes he'd faced at the Fox Theatre and the high speed car chase in pursuit of what he thought was Serena Tennyson through the streets of Atlanta didn't motivate him to lose the extra pounds, then nothing would.

He had a pain in his gut. _Damn._ They'd been coming a little too often and to sharp in severity as of late for his liking. He tried to put his best face forward. He didn't want to discuss any of his biological issues with Denise, though the alternative, the reason they had agreed to meet for lunch in the first place, wasn't going to be pleasant either.

"No Pork chops, Chris?" She pointed a greasy finger at his plate before she wiped her hands with the wet naps. It took her several swipes to get her fingers clean for a final time. "Now I truly know the world is coming to an end." Her hazel eyes found his glass of Ginger Ale warming in his hand. "I guess you'll be giving that up next."

He stopped picking at the chicken long enough to look up from his plate and forced himself into a smile. He seemed to always be doing that in the ten years they were married, gritting his teeth and trying to stave off another confrontation. "Just trying to scale back a little bit," Despite his best efforts, he felt himself getting angry. "Why don't we talk about something else?"

"Why don't we?" Denise powdered her nose and cheeks and applied a very light shade of red to her thin lips. She'd gone from nine and a half on the beauty scale to a perfect ten in an instant. An instrumental jazz tune blared through the speakers that Chris knew his brother Xavier would have appreciated it more than he did. But this high paced horn solo with the dark overture served as a perfect theme song for the woman who sat across from him. _Yes, you can be jazzy_ _can't you, Denise_? "I haven't heard from Roxanne today. It's 12:30 pm and so far she's given me a daily report no later than noon. Would you happen to know anything about that, _sir_?"

Sir was Denise's code word to Chris that she was on the fringes of being particularly irritated or being particularly playful with him. He always braced himself for the former until it was proven otherwise. "I spoke to her this morning." Chris sucked the last of his drink from his glass and sat it down with some emphasis near her hoping that she his subtle message that Roxanne would be going through his channels first, from this point on.

"What do you mean you spoke to her?"

"Yes, I spoke to her." Chris said without hesitation. "I was going to bring that up here, today. I believe that Roxanne should report directly to me twice a day until Eric is found. She'll be calling me again around 10pm tonight. " Denise rolled her hazel eyes at him, but so far all he could hear was Parker's noisy patrons and the Jazz music that had moved on to a piano solo track now. "I wrote her a check yesterday. I know you have a lot on your plate that includes a ton of bills. If and when she finds something I'll let you know. I promise."

Something won out inside Denise and her face softened. She nodded her head and rubbed her hands together, silently sending the message to him that he would take his advice and lead in this—at least for right now.

"Does she have your full confidence?"

"Scotty recommended her to you, Denise. Even if I didn't already know her from her stint in the FBI's Training Program, his recommendation alone would be enough for me." Chris said. Benjamin Scott had worked 37 years for various law enforcement agencies. More importantly, he along with Angel's father, Tyler Hicks, was the two men on the planet that Chris' father trusted explicability. "In fact, Roxanne told me that she had scheduled an interview with a source tonight."

Denise sipped at her lemonade through her straw until she found the bottom of her glass at last. Scotty told Chris that Denise didn't give him any particulars about why she needed to hire a private detective when she sought his advice. Whatever the matter was, his mentor and friend had said to him last night, _I felt she deserved someone who would work hard for her, who was_ _honest and wouldn't rip her off_. And when Chris asked him why he didn't share this information with him after she came to him for the recommendation he smiled tightly and said, _because you two are still at point beyond dissolution if I recall_. _Her business is not your business, Old Man_.

When Denise put her glass down the room had quieted enough for him to get on with his unpleasant business with her. He had already picked his ex-wife's brain about the when's and the where's of Erica's whereabouts and so far they'd come up empty. Now, he wanted some answers to the next obvious question rattling along in a parent's brain. "Why didn't you come to me directly when you thought Erica turned up missing?"

Denise shrugged her shoulders once. "Look, Chris, I know how you feel about my daughter."

Chris felt a new wave of anger wash over him. "How I _feel_ about her?" Chris exhaled threw his nostrils. "I want you to remember that I felt enough for her to help raise her since she was like six or seven years old, Denise. I care about what happens to her."

"But you don't _love_ her, Chris. You never have loved her."

"Of course I..." Chris' words lost their traction and they fell off a cliff.

"You see what I mean," Denise's laugh held no humor. "You can't even lie to me and say it. Damn you, Chris, Erica didn't mean to hurt you the way she did."

Chris leaned in close. The barbecue sauce on Denise's ribs had been spiced in honey and he could smell it on her breath. "Then what other name would you have for it?" He asked her and noted that they're little exchange had brought on some curious glances from the other the patrons whose tables and booths were closest to theirs. Chris stood up to wave and get the attention of the teenaged waitress down while he flashed his bureau shield bright and shiny to anyone who might pay too much attention to their private conversation. "Check please,"

They walked the half a block necessary to reach their parked cars. A strong gust of smoky, cold wind hit both of them in the face. Chris tried and failed to distinguish whether this particular whiff was from Parker's grill or from one of the dozen forest fires that continued to plague the metro area. _No matter what you say, Denise, it took a well thought out process to attempt to pull what that girl—_

Denise pressed a breast against his shoulder when they reached her Civic. "I prayed for you the other night."

"Did you?"

Denise frowned and he knew it wasn't because of the smoke or the cold wind. "Why wouldn't I, Chris?" She folded her arms over and planted her butt on the Civics' driver side door. "My God, you work for one of the most high profile agencies in the country, Chris. Between the explosion at the youth center and the hostages being held at the theatre, I knew that you were involved in all that somehow." Denise's gaze softened once again. "Of course, I had no idea you were one of those people being held inside Fox until after it was already over."

"I'm sorry, "Chris put his hands on her shoulders. "I couldn't have been easy for you not knowing where Erica was and then adding all of that madness to your life that involved me as well."

"And we opened the Triage Center at Atlanta General for the first time since the quake happened a month ago. It hit me all at once how serious everything really was. All the RN's were put on 24 hour call, but I never left the hospital once during the whole thing. The first responders kept bringing in bodies from both scenes...and then the nightmare recycled itself again when that crazy woman you arrested set off those bombs on the streets on the other side of town a few days later."

"Yea, it's been crazy..."

Denise had used the opportunity to pull his body closer to her. He got a full feel of her breast as she pushed them against his chest and his manhood responded to the exchange far quicker than he'd expected. He tried to take a half a step in retreat but she smoothly spun and pinned him to her to driver side door. She rested her head on his chest. He could smell her hairspray and perfume.

"I kept praying...hoping that I wouldn't see you carried in on one of those gurneys."

"I know...look, Denise," He tried to peel her off of him and yet the feel of her breast, the smell of her was intoxicating to say the least. In the two years since their divorce Chris had known few women—by his choice. After he and Denise got over the initial furor that all divorces go through, they entered an interesting, if unorthodox phase that led to the present arrangement.

They began to have sex again.

Chris felt that he didn't have the time or energy or interest to pursuit hardcore relationships with other women. Catherine _Siegel_ , he finally learned the family name of the woman who had been his date who died at the Fox Theatre, had only been his fourth or fifth date since their divorce finalized. Denise had been the woman he had fulfilled his sexual needs with for the most part over the last couple of years.

"Denise, listen, I need to go."

"That's cool. Why won't you come over to the apartment for a while after we both get off work tonight?" She asked and released in him just enough so that he could breathe his own air. "You said that Roxanne is supposed to call you around ten. We can be together when she does. You can pack a bag and spend the night—"

Chris was shaking his bald head. "I don't know about that, Denise."

Just as quickly she slid back in his arms again and everything had started all over for him, all the progress he had made a second earlier was gone. "Please Chris; I don't want to be alone tonight." She said, her voice purring with each word. "And it has been a couple of weeks since...since we've been together like that."

Denise's grip increased from a strong attachment to a vice grip and she twisted his head back in her direction to kiss him. She pushed her tongue between his lips, out again, and then nibbled at his ear lobe as she reached and found his fully responsive manhood in his slacks. Her tongue, her hands, all of her so inviting...but...

"Denise," He said. " _Stop."_

"What's wrong with you, _sir_ ," She shot back at him angrily. "Oh, yea, I get it. I _fucking_ get it, Angel's in town and suddenly you can't find the time to spend with me."

Chris raised his voice to meet her tone. " _Dr. Hicks-Dupree is here in Atlanta at the_ _request of the FBI_." He planted his fist on his hips. She had folded her arms. It was on, just like in the good old days of their marriage. "Besides she is a married woman. And I've told you, I'm telling you again this afternoon, that thing that occurred between us happened only once and it was years before you and I were married. Damn, Denise, we've been over this countless times. I don't understand why can't you get this through you head?"

Denise slammed her hands down on her wide hips. "Oh, I get it alright, _sir_ ,"

"Denise..." Chris looked at his watch. He had tons of work to do but no specific place he had to be at the moment, but she didn't know this. "Look, Denise, I need to go."

"Don't run from me, Chris."

"I'm not running." Yet, he was walking as fast as his legs and a stomach full of grilled chicken salad and ginger ale would carry him a half a block over to where his car was parked.

"You know, you're right, baby. I apologize. This really ain't got anything to do with Angel." Denise's angered look had faded into something that looked almost like hurt. Hurt might as well been a foreign film in an American theatre when it came to Agent Christopher Prince's ex-wife Denise Prince. She only seemed to know anger and annoyance and a little furor performances thrown in for good measure. "It's about _her_ isn't it? It's always been about the only woman you've truly ever loved."

Chris ground his teeth together. They'd drawn a small audience of passerby's on the adjacent sidewalk. A driver or two had slowed enough to hear a sentence or two before moving back to the business of driving. Chris thought he saw a man who looked too young to walk with a cane hide his cell phone from his view when Chris spotted him.

Chris exhaled from his nose again, and knew his skin was far too dark to redden from embarrassment but he was embarrassed for the both of them all the same. _Strife between a relatively young man and woman of color in a predominately Black neighborhood in the streets of Atlanta is nothing new or news worthy despite your efforts to change our image in the media, little brother._

"Leave it alone, Denise." Chris said when he thought he had gained enough distance between them. "Leave the dead alone."

But the rage was on her now. This show, friends and neighbors, was just beginning. " _Fuck that_ , it's _you_ that won't leave shit alone, Chris." Denise screamed in his direction. "I could never compete with you dearest Hoshi. I know you, Chris. I know you don't sleep around. In fact, I'll even wager that you'd rather go home tonight and masturbate to one of your drawings of that woman then physically be with me."

"That's _enough_ , Denise."

"Angel Hicks-Dupree...Hoshi Givens...what's her name, the woman you said died in that theatre the other night, yea I guess I don't compare to any of them. I guess my skin is too damned dark for your taste."

" _I said that's enough, Denise_." Chris fired back and if bystanders heard the conversation then to hell with them as well.

Denise seemed to shrink a little after he had raised his voice to a near max. She seemed shaken and uncomfortable under his hardened gaze that he usually reserved for the vilest of humanity he'd investigated in his career. But Denise had crossed a line with him mentioning two women who had died so young and so tragically.

He loosed his fist and struggled to regain his sense of calm. This absolutely was the feeling that reminded him of his marriage to this woman who he still occasionally slept with; the one who had decided to keep his name after their divorce. _Control_ , he chided himself silently and he took a deep breath and then another the way that Scotty had always taught him. _You must never lose control around Denise or any other woman; because once you cross that threshold you'll never able to be to look at yourself the same again._ Scotty had preached to him. _And I'm not just talking about the man in you who plays the role of the cop, Old Man._

"I'll be in touch with you tonight, as soon as I speak to Roxanne."

Chris sat in his own BMW afterwards, cracked the windows down half way, and tried to push the last of the heat he was feeling from his latest argument with Denise of its cracks.

Denise, apparently, had other plans for him.

She reached over the top of him and battered the back of his bald head with her fist over and again until he had regained his awareness of time and space, caught her fist and somehow unlatched his self from her assault, opened the card door, and pushed her off of him without injuring her.

He stood just outside of his car door and slammed it shut, rattling the glass, and exhaled loudly through his nostrils in exasperation. He was angry at Denise for sure for an unprovoked attack against him, but was absolutely furious with the FBI Agent inside that should have expected the possibility, knowing this woman's history the way that he knew it.

Denise sat on the pavement and looked towards the heavens and took a few forest fire plagued breaths of her own. When she looked at her ex-husband again there were tears running down both cheeks. Chris took notice. For all of their confrontations of the years, Denise Prince was not a woman who cried easily.

"Why can't you forgive?" She said. He knew from long experience that the forgiveness she referred to was meant for his step daughter Erica Lovings, not for her specifically. Through all of her faults, Denise Prince knew what kind of creature she was. "Why can't you understand that no mother wants to believe that her child is a liar? Please believe me when I say tell you that I didn't want to believe that my little girl was capable of what she tried to do to you. And I don't know what I will do if I lose you both. "

Agent Christopher Prince got back in his BMW, closed the door, and sat back against his head rest for what felt like a long time afterwards.

Denise had returned to his window, calm as an ocean's breeze now. He powered the window the rest of the way down, found Denise's hand and squeezed it with genuine affection, politely asked her to step back, and fired up the ignition. He decided right then and right there in Parker's parking lot, that the sexual escapades between him and his ex-wife had run its course and needed to end.

"I'll call you tonight." He said finally. "I'm sure that Roxanne Sanchez will have something meaningful to report."

He put the car in gear, sped off and left her there.
Roxanne

**Councilwoman Vanessa Davis' Bedroom, College Park, Georgia, 8** th **Day**

She fired a signal rifle round into the ceiling.

Councilwoman Vanessa Davis hopped her big ass off of the face of a white man that Roxanne Sanchez figured was a fellow politician or someone of note who held a lesser post in the Atlanta political scene. Davis nearly toppled over her bed onto the carpet from jumping off her lover so fast.

" _What in the hell is going on here_?" She asked. She reached for her robe and fastened it in one large bow around her waist. " _What are you doing in my house_?"

Roxanne, for the moment, ignored Councilman Davis and saved her attention and a taut smile for her guest. "Hi," Roxanne laid the rifle on her shoulder. "You might want to leave us girls alone for a while. We have so much catching up to do. I'm sure you know how it is?"

"Okay," The Naked Man said. "Sure."

He was a butterball of man who wore only his glasses, wedding ring and smelly socks while he had handled his business. He stepped in the right direction but made his first critical error of the evening by reaching for his boxers, which were draped across the chair nearest the king sized bed.

Roxanne fired a second shot into ceiling to remind him of his slip-up.

" _What are you doing_?" Davis asked her.

Roxanne scratched her forehead. "I guess I'm not making myself clear. I mean for you to get out...right...now."

"Okay," The Naked Man said again. "Sure."

Councilman Davis watched the younger man vacate her bedroom as unclothed as the day he was born. She muttered an apology in his general direction and asked him to call her. A moment later both women listened as he slammed the front door close. Roxanne still held the rifle over her shoulder, but kept the barrel pointed away from the councilwoman's face—for now.

Vanessa Davis:

She was a full figured Black woman in her mid 50's. Underneath the housecoat she'd been dressed in a panty less bustier, garter belt, and heels. She was sliding her panties back on right now and fitting one of her signature wigs on her scalp. She wore large hoop earrings and when she had spoken before it was with a raspy voice. Her teeth were darkened where they had been stained by years of caffeine and nicotine abuse.

She forced herself to sit back against her headboard, cross her legs and relax as much as a woman who had a maniac running around her bedroom with a rifle could.

"Alright, so congratulations, you have my attention, _Little Girl_." Davis said. "How may I help you?"

Roxanne plopped her butt in a nearby love seat. She was dressed in what amounted to a body fitting cat suit. It was so black and snug that one could barely tell where the shadows ended and Roxanne's curves began.

"You've got it all wrong, councilwoman; I'm here to help you."

"Help me?" Davis drawn eyebrows shot up. "How do you mean?"

"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. Trust me when I say that each subsequent question is more important than the one that came before it. You're going to answer my questions, of that I have no doubt. But failure by you to answer them in a timely manner will result in me bashing you upside your head with this." Roxanne emphasized her Smith and Wesson for the other woman to see.

"Alright,"

"Any omission will be considered insufficient. A blatant lie will be considered _very_ insufficient."

"Alright,"

Roxanne had watched Victor use these same techniques down below. _Sometimes,_ Senorita _, the mere threat of pain is enough to get the answers that you need._ He had taught her well. "It's been my experience that you will bleed a long painful time before you died of these head wounds."

Councilwoman Davis asked and received permission to slowly reach into one of her drawers. Roxanne targeted her forehead with the rifle while she methodically pulled out a pack of cigarettes, and to Roxanne's anguish got one going. _Women have vices as well, Victor._

Roxanne laid the rifle across her lap. "I'll take that as if you are ready to begin."

Vanessa Davis nodded as she exhaled.

Roxanne wasted no time. "Where is Erica Lovings?"

"Who?"

Roxanne picked up the rifle and fired a single shot into Councilman Davis' monitor of an old school PC that was resting on a computer stand on the far side of the bedroom.

Davis came unglued. " _Stop that, Goddamn you_."

"Stop what?" Roxanne asked and laid the hot rifle back in her lap. "Oh, that business with your computer—I want you to think of it as my way of reminding you that we are going to reboot this conversation for the first and last time."

Davis inhaled another hit of her cigarette. "Look, Sweetie, I know Erica Lovings was seen with my son before she went missing. I'm sure somebody, somewhere, told you that, that's why you're here terrorizing my guest and blowing holes in my roof." She said and pointed the ash end of her smoke at Roxanne. "I don't know where she is now."

"Let's say that I believe you," Roxanne leaned forward in the chair. "At least for the time being, I do. Tell me where your son is?"

"He's tucked away where you or no one else will find him, _Little Girl_." Davis actually smiled. "Ever,"

Roxanne hopped up out of the chair, made her way through a cloud of cigarette smoke towards Davis who looked to hold her ground.

"Let me get this straight," Roxanne said in a low voice. She'd placed the rifle's barrel just below Vanessa Davis' chin. "You sex men who should be home with their families. Even worse, that one particular man belongs to a race that you openly despise, at least in public. You're always rumored to be stealing tax payer's funds in some shape, manner, or form. And now you're hiding a killer." Roxanne pushed the gun out of the other woman's face long enough to feign applause. "Well done, Councilwoman Davis, we should display more of your wonderful merits for your followers to see."

It was Davis turn to lean forward with a response. "My supporters are plentiful, rich, and see only what I choose to let them see." Davis allowed her dull smile to showcase itself again. She shifted her wig to a better position on her skull. Nonetheless, Little Girl, you are wrong about one of your accusations. If Xavier Prince's niece is dead, my Trey didn't kill her."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do."

Roxanne eased back and tucked the rifle on her shoulder again. "Sometimes we're blind to the failures of the ones we love the most."

Davis shook her big head and stubbed out her smoke in the ashtray besides the bed. "I ain't blind to shit." She said. "Trey is far from perfect, but he is not some heartless killer."

"Tell me about some of his imperfections."

"He has some convictions. If your car isn't parked in the garage he would steal it. If you tell him not go there he will trespass on it. If you can get high or drunk off of it he will try to sell it to you." Davis rattled them off the top of her brain from memory. She combed her wig with her fingers. "But more than any of that, Trey's first love...and first failing, is that he loves a sexy hood rat more than anything else in this world." She leaned in close to Roxanne again, to guarantee the younger woman wouldn't miss what she disclosed next. "But he didn't adore women any more than his running partner...Erica Lovings."

Roxanne cocked a brow.

"Are you telling my Erica was bisexual?"

"Bisexual my ass, she was a stud." Davis said and offered a hoarse laugh that lasted far too long. "My Trey told me he'd never been around a more sexually aggressive person in his whole life, man or woman."

"Alright," Roxanne wondered why either of the Prince's mentioned Erica's sexuality to her. "Okay, so what did go wrong?" Come on Councilwoman Davis, you and your son sound close. He had to tell you something specific?"

Davis slid another cigarette between her lips but had seemed to have misplaced her lighter in her bed covers.

"Maybe," Was all that she offered Roxanne.

Roxanne eased the rifle down some ninety degrees to remind the other woman they were still locked under the terms of their agreement that she'd established earlier.

"Maybe you should finish talking, I'm all ears."

Vanessa Davis cleared her throat. "Like I said, Erica was hyper aggressive towards other females and I just didn't get this info from my son. That girl was the talk of the streets, especially in some of the rougher neighborhoods where she and Trey spent entire days drinking and hoe hopping. Where she may have bitten off more than she could chew though, is when they stepped to some young bitches from Carver."

_Shit_. "Let me guess, one of these young women was a girlfriend of an Usher." Roxanne didn't grow up in the Carver Housing Projects, but she went to middle and high school with enough of the residents to know the territory and the stories that originated out of that hell hole all too well. Some in the media called Carver the most dangerous complex of its type in America to live in. A man who called himself the Bishop attired himself something that made him look nothing short of a Catholic Priest, ran the place pounding a bible with one hand and holding a gun in the other. He had deployed his lieutenants, his Ushers to establish and then maintain order in the project. The tenants living there were little more than modern day indentured servants in truth. Their belongings, their homes, their very _lives_ were subject to be taken by the Bishop, his Deacon or the Ushers if he were so inclined. It was recently rumored that he had his own harem of young women who were daughters and mothers and wives of other residents that he regularly fathered children with.

"Yep, I knew you were bright, _Little Girl_ , she bedded one of his main squeezes and bragged about it to anyone who would listen."

_Damn_. "So your son believes this Usher killed Erica simply because he felt disrespected or the usual street bullshit young people swear by. Do you know any of this for a fact?"

Davis found her lighter. A fresh stench of cigarette smoke clouded the room. Roxanne shook her head in disgust.

"I only know that my Trey believes this to be true." Davis said. "But sure or not, I couldn't take any chances of any harm coming to my baby. Anyway, like I said before, he didn't have anything positive going on here anyway. If it wasn't this mess with Erica, then he was going to probably end up dead in the streets of Atlanta for something else. I wasn't having that, no way."

Roxanne nodded in understanding. "You could have gone to the police."

Davis stood and pointed at the holes in her ceiling. "And you could have knocked. Anyway, like I said, he was facing other charges, and like you said, I ain't terribly popular downtown. The APD wasn't going to pin this murder on Trey simply because they can't or _won't_ find the real killer. What you know, _Little Girl_ , is what they know as well."

Roxanne watched the other woman make her way over to her massive walk-in closet that one end seemed to reach towards Augusta and the other end towards the Alabama state line. She dropped the housecoat and pulled an oversized nightshirt over her head, unhooked her bra and let it fall to the floor and slipped on some pajama pants.

"And anyway, I didn't have a whole lot of choice. The APD was the least of my worries. The Choir Boys may have had Trey on their radar for different reasons. He has had ties to the Black Knights gang on near north side of town as well."

Roxanne shook her head again. As much as she hated to admit it, Councilwoman Davis had done all of the things she would have if their roles were reversed. She didn't know how rotten a kid Trey Davis was at his core, but he apparently was stupid enough to be mixed up in a lot of crap that put his life at risk.

And Roxanne knew all about stashing someone where no one would find them. All the roads seemed to be leading to the dead end which was Carver Street Housing Projects. She turned—

"Do you have any kids?"

"No," Roxanne said and then added, "I don't have anyone."

Davis waved an accusing thick index finger at her. "Then don't ever try to tell me what I should or should not have done when it comes to the safety and well-being of my baby."

Roxanne switched the safety on her rifle and threw its strap over her left shoulder. She stood on the desk that seated the computer, disengaged two wires above the window seal, betraying how she managed to get inside this mini mansion in the first place. She began to squeeze her thin frame—

"What are you planning to do with this information I've given you?" Vanessa Davis wanted to know.

"I'm going to Carver." Roxanne said as a matter of fact. "All trails lead me there. I'm going to find Erica Lovings, dead or alive, and bring her home to her mother."

Davis reached into her underwear drawer in the same cautious manner she did before when she found her pack of smokes. Roxanne has already disengaged the safety on the rifle just in case this woman gets stuck on stupid and tried something irrational. Although Roxanne can feel her pulse in her ears, she tells herself that she is calm and in control of this situation.

Roxanne Sanchez is surprised when the older woman draws cocaine from a zip lock bag onto a sheet of paper, and eventually took a small hit up each nostril.

Roxanne's stomach churned.

"Sweetheart, I'll let you in on another secret besides all of my nasty habits I've displayed for you tonight." Davis said. "You tough and all of that, but the Carver Housing Projects is as about as far from an ideal travel destination as you get in this city—if not this hemisphere right now."

"I'm touched." Roxanne failed to mask her sarcasm. "But I was born and raised in this city. _And by all accounts I shouldn't have ever made it back here from Mexico alive_. I know the turf. I know how dangerous it can get over there.

"Then you don't know a damned thing. I should show you something."

The older woman had gained enough of Roxanne's attention for her to climb back down to the carpet. Vanessa Davis pulls her blouse back over her head and exposed a heavy breast with _Tell me what you see when you visualize our future_ , tattooed on left boob _and I visualize a future_ _filled with misery and pain_ , inked on the right one. A chain seemingly meant to connect the passages lay on her chest wall in between.

"I saw you at Mayor Ernestine Johnson's press conference on the day that Senator Lavelle announced to the world that she had been a member of A House in Chains." Roxanne tried and failed to keep astonishment out of her tone. "I thought you were playing for the camera. You've taken the mark. You are a member as well."

Councilwoman Davis left her blouse in the floor where it was and reached for the housecoat instead. When she felt it was adequately secured, she opted to return to her stash and took another long whiff of her nose candy. When she raised her head again, blood had begun to trickle down her left nostril. She must have felt it dripping because she wiped the blood and the tears associated from the hit from her left eye as well.

"Listen, sweetheart, any fool with a right hand and a pair of lips can read Isaac Prince's mandates and become a full-fledged member." She said. "But to join the ranks of The Peacekeepers they put you through various mental and physical test and an extensive background check and training period before you are initiated. And to admitted to the Board, well, I'll tell you that the secondary governing body is an honor only bestowed to 12 people nationwide and you must be unanimously be voted in by the Circle."

"And you're on the Board?"

" _Were_ would be the more appropriate term for it, _Little Girl_. It only takes one Circle member who can prove you as unworthy to excuse you from the Board and Grace Edwards has her sources and exercised her authority in doing so a couple days ago." They stood in silence a moment. "You see, I suffer in the 'self-respect' part of the mandate, as you probably can tell." Vanessa Davis looked down at herself and then the plate of cocaine. "I'm sure these tattoos will take longer than those same couple of days to scrub off."

"I'm sure recovering from your dependency will take more than a couple of days as well."

"Amen," Councilwoman Davis said gruffly. Her gaze hardened and she looked into the dresser side mirror and her eyes quickly darted away, ashamed at the truths the reflection revealed about her life. For a moment Roxanne felt a tremor of sorrow for her. "Perhaps I'd given myself into the audacity of hope...or whatever that means for me." She refocused with some effort and found Roxanne's dark eyes. "Listen... Little Girl, I know you all grown and have a job to do and all of that, but take this warning from me—you'll want to steer clear of Carver."

Roxanne ejected the rifle's final shells and sat them on the nightstand. She found a spot right in front of Vanessa Davis. Victor Castillo wouldn't have approved.

Someday, when the time is right, Gonzales and I will stop what we are doing here...and find you.

I will see you suffer for what you have done here down below.

I will see you suffer before your end.

But that was her own private apocalypse for another day, her Whirlwind. Tonight, she had needed an opened door when all others were slamming shut. She even had something to report in her phone call to Chris Prince a half an hour from now that she might not have without this conversation having taken place. And if showcasing the smallest bit of respect and pity for this woman was the price she would have to pay—

"Councilwoman, what is going to go down at Carver?" Roxanne asked and when the other woman didn't immediately answer she added: "Please tell me."

Fresh tears misted in Councilwoman Davis' eyes. Roxanne couldn't tell rather they were the result of the potency of the cocaine or from the information about Carver that the woman had learned from her tenure on the Board.

Yet, after a moment, Roxanne Sanchez realized that she'd shed enough of her own to know that these were genuine and true enough.

"Carver is going to experience a tragedy unlike any ever seen before." And then Roxanne watched Davis' face brighten with sudden mix of pride and wonder. "While as the same time Carver is going to experience a rebirth that will be glorious and long overdue." And then Roxanne could not decipher if the hysterical fit that had taken hold of the other woman was laughing or crying. "Now that Xavier Prince is freed from prison, I expect Carver to experience a purging none of us shall ever forget."
Xavier

**Morehouse College, Activity Center, 9** th **Avenue**

The Circle had scheduled a meeting for 4:30 pm sharp.

The President of Morehouse College was wearing a new suit, new loafers but had forgotten to brush his teeth. He shook Xavier Prince's hand for a second time in as minutes when he and his four associates stepped into the school's administrative conference room on the third floor and began to seat themselves at the large spit shined table.

The president's assistant, a gray haired man who had that old eagle eye going audibly objected to the use of this seat of higher learning for A House in Chains affairs. He reminded his boss of the attacks of 411 and Pandora's promise of more reprisals if Xavier and his people did not turn themselves over to local authorities immediately.

The president slapped his assistant warmly on the shoulder as if to say that everything would be fine, but never unfastened his gaze off of the One. He explained to his friend and colleague those attacks were perpetrated against People of Color in general and not A House in Chains exclusively.

Outside the room Xavier noticed that the campus was a bustle of activity as the students continued their preparations for graduation ceremonies that were only weeks away. _With so many people coming and going about the Peacekeepers will be challenged to secure our place here_. Yet, it warmed him to his marrow to see so many people that looked like him succeeding at such a high academic level. No, this wasn't Princeton to be sure, but he wondered if he had missed out on a life experience by not attending a predominately Black school here in the South. _Dad, I_ _think you would have been proud of what are people are accomplishing, despite all of the challenges that we continue to face._

Isaac Prince.

Xavier wondered if the dreams that he had been having of his late father, especially in the days since his release from Calhoun State Prison meant anything in the grand scheme of cosmic events.

I'll leave that speculation for another day. We have much business to discuss, the Circle and I, and time is short on so many different fronts.

The president allowed his Second to talk him into only allowing the Circle use of a smaller ready room on the far side of the corridor where they sat now. Quincy Morgan grunted in annoyance but Grace Edwards and the others lifted themselves from their seats and silently began the trek to the reserved area.

It was tight to say the least. The space...or lack thereof, seemed to squeeze them around the collar and the waist with its closeness and stuffiness. Nonetheless, a spectacular mural showcased up on the wall just above their heads was a jewel. The artist was as nearly talented a painter as his brother Chris was at sketching. The mural featured men who had done much to farther the cause of People of Color in America: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X, his father Isaac Prince, President Adolphus Sweet...and _himself_ were painted from left to right.

_I've done nothing to deserve to be placed on a pedestal with these pioneers in the cause of justice and liberty for our people._ He found himself mostly disturbed with the artist rendition that showed him facing out with his palms up in a Jesus like pose. I'll say that I'm closer to the devil with the way I lead my personal life: I smoke too many cigarettes, drink a little much malt liquor, and whore around too often. In fact, after he spent the first 24 hours of his freedom with his boys, he helped escort them both back to their mother' s homes and their lives and school while he returned to the Circle. He spent his second day mostly on his cell conferring with allies, attending press conferences and tending to other Executive matters that concerned A House in Chains.

_My nights were far more relaxing though_. He had bedded two women— _at the same time_ last night. The thicker of the two seemed particularly eager to please him. She would whisper in his ear as she rode him, _what do you see when you visualize our future, baby_ , and the other woman would respond between sticking her tongue in either of their mouths, _I see hours and_ _hours of drawing a line between pleasure...and pain._

He bit back at the self-criticism. The numbers that Grace Edwards provided him from the rise in Black illiteracy rates and the lowering of unwed child births to falling murder rates, drug arrest, felony convictions all told him he had done much in raising his people to new heights of prosperity and perception on his watch. _However, our greatest challenges still lie ahead...and so do our greatest opportunities._

He decided—and not for the first time, that the liquidation by any means necessary of his people by Serena Tennyson and Pandora would not stand while he still lived.

The five members of the Circle sat at their cramped table and got to it.

Xavier placed a toothpick in his mouth. "I appreciate everyone's attendance on such short notice—"

"Excuse me, Xavier," Quincy Morgan eyed the entrance from which they had come. Aren't we going to wait for Senator Lavelle to arrive?"

Grace Edwards shook her braided hair and peaked up from over her glasses. "The senator has been...let's say, _uninvited_ from Circle meetings until further notice."

"Who authorized that?" Quincy asked.

"I did." Xavier responded.

Quincy looked at his leader with inquisitive but respectful eyes. "Xavier, Lavelle is a United States Senator. He is an important man to both as an individual and as a front man to our cause."

"And he would probably have been the Democratic Nominee for president two years ago if would stop displaying his faults for the entire world to see. Anyway, he's not an official member of the Circle, and if he isn't careful he'll find himself out on his ass the way we culled Councilwoman Vanessa Davis and her cocaine habits from the Board."

"The senator has no such habits that I'm aware of—"

"I don't like the man, Quincy." Xavier fixed his Sergeant at Arms, and newly positioned number two, with a hard glare. _You were a friend and an ally, Ernestine. I will miss you deeply_. He asked that they stand up once again to honor the city's former mayor with a moment of silence. When they sat down again Xavier opened his attaché case that he'd brought with him, picked up a stack off of the very top and slid them towards Quincy Morgan. "I have complaint after complaint after _complaint_ from other House staffers and other support parties about how they are spoken to and mistreated by the Senator from Ohio. He is a bully. I won't tolerate his arrogance one second longer in this organization. US Senator or not, Anthony Lavelle better change his spots or he is out." Xavier swung the toothpick around in this mouth from side to side hoping to calm his nerves. "Think of it, Quincy, these same types of questions of character got brought up about Lavelle during the primaries. He was _this_ close to closing in on the nomination. America almost told the world that a second Black man, even one with open ties to our House, could be voted to the most powerful office in the free world. Do you realize what better position we would be in today facing down our enemies if Lavelle were the first or even second in command of the country?" Xavier let out a long, low whistle. "All politicians are rich, Quincy. All politicians lie to some extent or the other. And all of them have dirt under their fingernails. But Lavelle cost himself...cost _us_ a wondrous opportunity because people don't like his personality not his politics. He's a masterful public speaker, _though no more so than my brother_ _Chris would have been_ , but otherwise he has no innate value to our House. So I put his ass on a plane and sent him home to Cleveland or Akron or wherever the hell he's from so he can hope to get his act together before the next election."

Quincy Morgan searched the table for support...or at least a comment to dispute what Xavier had said but found that none was coming.

"Anyway," Xavier Prince continued as if the Lavelle conversation had never taken place. "I want to say how proud of what each and every one of you has accomplished for our House in my absence. You honor yourselves and you honor my father's vision. I am sorry; however, to inform you that this will likely be our final gathering as a governing body until this crisis concerning Pandora has passed." He found Percy Harrison on his far left specifically. "I guess you picked one hell of a time to join our ranks full time."

Percy Harrison laughed:

He was tall but slouched enough even when he was seated that he lost in an inch or so off of his given height. He was dark skinned though not to the brilliant opaque skin coloring that Xavier's brother Chris was shaded with, but dark enough that his thinning mustache and patches and sideburns were almost luminous on his face. Xavier had asked for this man's full inclusion into the Circle after he learned of Ernestine's death. He felt that Grace Edward's background with the FBI, Warren Washington's ties to the sports and entertainment circles, Quincy's controversial but successful run as they leader of The New Black Panther Party and his own background in law gave the Circle the versatility and credibility to command both loyalty from its base and a certain element of fear from its opposition. _But_ you _are the Everyman I believe that we've been missing, Percy._ He should indeed feel comfortable even in these close surroundings considering he had come up through the education field.

"And at what point will this crisis pass, Xavier?" Quincy asked him.

"Yea," Percy added. "Serena Tennyson is on the street again."

Grace Edwards looked up from her notes. "Her wild escape from the APD and the FBI is a victory for Pandora's moral alright and a devastation for all law enforcement. I wish I could say it any other way."

Grace Edwards:

The House in Chains number three was a smaller figured, dark skinned woman in her early 30's who was pretty enough, but far too slender and sweet for Xavier's exotic taste. She had big brown eyes made even larger inside her glasses and wore her hair in dozens upon dozens of small, slim braids. She looked professional, as she always did, in a brown business suit and pumps. Xavier knew that Grace's Intelligence background and her friendship was his biggest assets offsetting the death of Ernestine.

He heard Warren Washington snort and slouch down in his chair as if someone had let air out of his personal balloon.

He was a 6'8" tall former hoops legend, who was high yellow in skin tone, still looked very athletic and had been graced with the sparkling gray eyes that most women could find themselves lost in. Xavier only knew the man had been slow to integrate his father's beliefs as his very own, since he'd come over with Quincy and so many others from the New Black Panther Party.

"The fucking FBI," He finally said. "They are such incompetent bastards."

Quincy snatched a penny from out of his dress pants tossed it at eye level and tossed it again. "I hope you're smarter than that, Warren. Serena escaped without a trace of her whereabouts. I know you don't truly believe that was by mere chance. It was obviously a conspiracy. They were _all_ in on it."

Xavier shot out of his chair and got into Quincy's face.

"So which party does my brother belong to, the incompetent or the conspirators?"

Grace played the part of the diplomat, as she had many times before. "We need to concentrate our efforts and our energies on the issues at hand and we have a host of them to consider, gentlemen. Firstly, we have Serena's not so subtle threats against the children of our communities to consider."

"You're over Intelligence, Grace." Percy said. "You're people must know something about Louis Keaton's whereabouts."

Four sets of eyes bore into Grace. Xavier had to admit he was curious to what Grace knew as well. She had predicted the 411 attacks...at least the substance of some type of attack against Atlanta citizens' weeks before the onslaught on the first day of this month. Evans and other Peacekeepers in Calhoun had fed the data to Xavier and the One did what he could from the inside to gain all the information for a defense... _any_ type of resistance against what eventually struck Atlanta and their House; _that's why Julian, myself and his Black Knights approached Michael Davenport in the first place._

He had gambled and loss. Davenport didn't know about the attacks, _I'm convinced_ _now_ —but he did know something, and he was confident enough with the information that he tried to bargain for his life with it.

Xavier wished he had a little more time to drag it out of him.

Grace was saying: "I don't have anything, guys. I'm not picking up the levels of chatter that filtered out of the internet, in phone lines, and word off of the street like I did in the days before 411. And to make it worse, Keaton's disappeared off of the grid. Serena has him tucked away somewhere, until she's ready to unleash that pervert again."

"What's your gut tell you, Grace?"

Grace gave her leader and the remainder of the room a once over.

"This so called escalation, Where are our Children, is no doubt about Keaton kidnapping Black children just like he did 30 years ago when this Caretaker fellow ordered him to do the same." She looked as if she were searching for some specific terminology, and then decided to dumb it down for the boys. "I expect these abductions to be on a smaller scale. The first fireworks have already been lit by 411and then Deliverance when Serena made her epic escape."

"I agree," Xavier made his fingers into a cage and sucked on his toothpick. _I need a_ _cigarette._ "We don't know that Keaton will be involved at all. She may send an individual—"

"Or a group of individuals," Grace added.

"You're right, Grace, she may send an army of men or women to our neighborhoods trying to abduct of children for ransom...or worse." Xavier finished his thought.

Warren and Percy both nodded in unison. Quincy tossed his penny up higher again and caught it.

And what is the symbolism behind the penny, Quincy?

"I have a suggested course of action that I would like us to pursue but I am willing to follow and reasonable idea any of you may have."

Warren slunk further down in his chair. Quincy Morgan squeezed his penny. "I apologize if I offended you before, Number One." He said sardonically. "I didn't mean to suggest—"

Grace intervened smoothly again. "What is done is done. We need to concentrate our efforts on the matters at hand. I'm thinking that with Serena back in the field that Pandora's next attack is days if not hours away. I don't want to be caught completely flatfooted again as we were with the 411 attacks."

"Her escape did serve our cause in a manner of speaking." Quincy pointed out.

"How,"

"Her threats against our children, Percy, caused a huge uptick in applications for admission into A House in Chains in general and the Peacekeepers specifically. We're struggling to process all of the applications and background checks right now."

"That's good," Warren sat up straight. "That means more 'Keepers on the streets."

Grace grunted.

"If you have something to say, Grace—"

She removed her glasses and chewed on the end of one of them. She was looking up, but not at him and it wasn't the first time that Xavier had noticed it today. _Something very bad has_ _happened._ A House of Chains was blessed to have arguably the finest Intelligence officer in the country seated at this table. _She knows something she's not sharing_. Xavier made a mental note to ask her about it when the time was right.

"I have no doubt to what the Peacekeepers are capable of." She finally said and looked streamlined at Quincy Morgan when she said it. As the Sargent at Arms, he was directly responsible for the recruiting, training, and day to day operations of the Peacekeepers. No one at this table, save Xavier himself, could override his authority in military matters. "But unless you have a personal escort for the 10's of thousands of school aged children in the Atlanta Metro area then your numbers, no matter how impressive, are ultimately irrelevant."

"But surely a heavier Peacekeeper presence will be a deterrent against Keaton or anyone else from trying to abduct our children?" Quincy said.

Percy looked if he had a point to make as well. "We've also set up hundreds of safe houses as well. These families can be counted on to help any child who runs into unexpected trouble. They've been asked to notify us first even before the police, if they come in contact with a child or a potential abductor."

"These are all wonderful ideas." Grace went back to taking her notes. "I don't believe it will be enough."

Xavier nodded in Grace's direction. "She's right. The safe house idea is a splendid one and I think we should implement it immediately." Xavier found Quincy's gaze. "Expedite the admission policy for a Peacekeeper position in the Atlanta area only. Do not arm these prospects until a full back ground check and gun training are completed as per usual policy. Still, these new recruits can serve us the front line defense against these potential kidnappings in our neighborhoods. Let's hope that the sight of Khaki suits and sneakers will be enough."

Surprisingly, Quincy was nodding in agreement. "I would love the opportunity to use our more seasoned troops in campaign directly against Pandora. I'm sure Grace can supply us with a target or two, a stronghold or a point of interest that we can attack while they are full of themselves and vulnerable."

Warren's face brightened even more as a large smile graced his pink lips.

"Hell yea," Was all he said.

Xavier shook his head.

"And why not," Quincy looked up at the man standing near him. "If these veteran Peacekeepers aren't going to be used to supplement the recruits in the protection of our young—

"You will have your war with Pandora in due time, my friend." Xavier sucked on his toothpick and patted his Sargent at Arms on the shoulder. He leaned down and spoke loud enough for all of them to hear, but his words were specifically spoken for Quincy's ears alone. "I have a little somethin' somethin for your Peacekeepers to handle for me first."

Quincy's eyebrows raised and a light seemed to go on in his eyes. The man's interest had definitely been raised. "I can't wait to hear what you have in mind, Number One."

Xavier stood as large as his petite frame allowed. "I told you when we gathered in here how proud I was of each of you while I was away at Calhoun. I meant every word." He eyed Percy Harrison first and the man seemed to shy away from his gaze. You are indeed a humble man, Percy. "You stepped into your role while I was away, and now you are filling the shoes of a great lady who has passed on to a better eternity than the fate that was given to her in life."

Now he faced down Warren Washington and struggled to keep the sneer of contempt from curling his top lip. _As a human being you are not much better than Senator Lavelle. You've been pampered, praised and highly paid your entire life. Still, he had almost single handily brought the Hollywood crowd to their doorstep._ Warren had powerful friends with very deep pockets. Xavier lowered his voice a decibel. "You secured our business arraignment with the Liberians, Warren. And I can appreciate how difficult it was for you to keep the millions of dollars off the books."

Warren looked apologetic. "It wasn't good enough, Xavier. The IRS still found the pipeline that led them back to here...back to _you_."

It did. But in Xavier's eyes, the two years he served for laundering and racketeering money would prove well worth all he had gone through in that hell of a place. _Chris, your government friends still haven't figured it out._

And by the time they would it would already be too late.

A House of Chains had latched themselves to the Liberian people, or at least with an ethnic minority in their civil war. The government eventually found the channels that told them that Xavier's people here in the states, were laundering money to buy weapons for this minority to fight their oppressors. Xavier Prince, the true leader that he was, fell on the proverbial sword and pled guilty to all charges and served time at Calhoun for the crimes of his House. _But even finding me guilty, your sister agency was still sloppy in their investigation, Chris. They never found these so called millions that a House in Chains had earned for distributing these semi-automatic guns, these explosive devices, these rocket launchers and other weapons of war that the report said was enough hardware to arm a small army._

_Your people didn't find the money, Chris, because we weren't selling weapons big brother...we were_ buying _them._

"My arrest and incarceration was necessary to stop the investigation before our government found out what we were really up to." Xavier's voice was a whisper.

To Grace Edward he said: "You are the Circle's rock, My Lady." She wouldn't hold eye contact with him, but she could not help but blush. "Your efforts are tireless and your professionalism is unmatched of anyone who sits between these walls." He heard his own tone alter to one of reflection. "I wouldn't have survived my visit to Calhoun without you. It was you who kept me informed on what was going on the outside both professionally...and what was going on in my boys' life. It was you who turned me on to the presence of Officer Evans and the other friends of this House who were on the inside. As I've said before, you are the Circle's rock. You are my rock, Grace."

"I am here to serve you, Xavier," She finally looked into his eyes...and for the briefest moment, he thought he saw something there that she had somehow kept buried deep in her soul for no one to see. _It can't be. God bless your poor soul if it is._ "I live to serve our House."

He peered down at Quincy Morgan...and felt the other man steel himself for whatever words found their way out of his mouth.

"And you, old friend," Xavier grinned and to the shock of all who sat in this room, of all who were members of the Circle, watched as the sitting man grinned as well. "It is not often that you and I see eye to eye is it, Quincy?"

Quincy pulled out his penny again and turned it over in his large hand to that each side of it came into view. "I like to think that we are opposite sides of the same coin, Number One." He said.

"Perhaps," Xavier nodded his head. "But we had a list of campaigns for your Peacekeepers to complete while I was away."

It was Quincy Morgan's turn to nod.

He told Xavier that the Peacekeepers had netted that asshole that was doing those home invasions in predominately Black neighborhoods near Six Flags about six months earlier. They also nabbed the cross dressers who were hitting small business owners and even some churches off of Simpson and Tyler streets.

"They were easy pickings." Warren added.

"We were also able to finally locate the Twins as well." Quincy said.

Xavier nodded, remembering the Intel on them when his days sometimes grew particularly long...and lonely in that cage. Twin males who were originally from Jamaica were hiding in parking lots of Mom and Pop establishments and specifically were targeting single black women and the young kids that were riding in cars or walking with them. They would kidnap the women and force the kids, with the threat of murdering all involved, to watch why they raped their mothers. When they were being real nasty, they would shoot the mother anyway, even if she had fully cooperated, leaving these young children to fend for themselves for hours before help arrived.

"The APD wasn't making in ground in their investigations. We found them first." Quincy's smile had gone the way of the telegram. "It was an honor killing them both myself."

Xavier lowered himself in Quincy's private space and said: "There is only one item that your people did not complete to my satisfaction."

"Carver," The other man made the word a statement. He slowly stood to face down his leader. "Forgive me, Number One, but I figured with what was transpiring between our House and Pandora that you had shied away from a campaign that we eat up so many resources, material and manpower. Bishop is not going anywhere. Carver can wait."

Percy rubbed at the hair of his thin mustache. Warren's gray eyes shifted back and forth in anticipation of what might transpire between the two men next. Even Grace had stopped with her note taking and looked as if she were holding her breath.

"Carver will _not_ wait. In fact those poor people have waited far too long already." Xavier pointed at the great men in the mural above the table. He walked over to the other side and stood directly underneath the figurine that had been his father, Isaac Prince. "Read my father's three mandates again." He said to all of them. "If you do you will certainly understand my rationale. We are to respect self, we are to respect family, and we are to respect community," He said at the top of his voice. And when his Circle no longer dared to blink their eyes in his wake he added in a softer tone. "And the people of that community have suffered for years under the rule of hoodlums, the gangs, and lower life's that came before, and those who would eventually displace the Choir Boys some day in the future. We gave our word that someday we would liberate them. I gave my word."

"Respectfully, Number One," Quincy said cautiously. "Pandora is a more immediate threat to the Black community as a whole than these lowlife gang bangers and drug dealers will ever be. If 411 is not evidence of this then I don't know what else is?" Quincy took a few long strides and was standing next to his leader in no time. "We know that some type of provocation is launching soon if not already under way. Serena Tennyson represents a clear and present danger to our people," It was the Sargent at Arms turn to look at each member of the Circle, one and then all. "Ernestine Johnson has already fallen, must we all die before we bring the fight to Pandora's doorstep."

Xavier stepped into the taller man's shadow. Xavier knew that he was unlikely to last long in any physical confrontation with Quincy Morgan but he held his ground and the other man's gaze all the same.

"Are you telling me that I am not performing my duties, Quincy?" Xavier didn't give his Second a chance to respond. " _I_ was an intended target of the 411 attacks as well."

Quincy balled his hand into a fist...but turned away. "And someone is going to pay with their life for that transgression against you." He said. And after a moment of weighted silence he pointed his long index finger at the portrait of Isaac Prince. "When your father founded this House he was the sole ruler, with the Circle and the Board serving under him. You, on the other hand, gave the Circle more discretionary powers on matters of state."

It had been his greatest mistake in the ten years he had been the One. _But it was the only_ _way that I could convince The New Black Panther Party to put their outdated mandates and methods aside and join our cause_. Xavier had needed their numbers and their money to keep his father's fading dreams alive then. Now was the moment that he would find out if it was all worth the price he paid.

"Alright, Quincy, you've made a fair point." Xavier said.

"I'm not interested in making any _points_ ," He made the last word a curse. "I am only interested in the short and long term goals of what is best for People of Color and this House that your father built. That being said, I believe that you are playing this liberation thing with Carver far too politically. This campaign will cost us resources and lives of scores of Peacekeepers for sure."

Xavier took one long and final look at his dad, who sat high, and looked low over them.

"Quincy, what did my father's final mandate say?"

"Number One, please—"

"I want you to tell me what it says."

Quincy Morgan inhaled deeply and then stood as straight as his athletic build allowed. "Your father said that only after the first three mandates are completed may we turn our attention to the Rooster."

Xavier nodded slowly, Quincy's words were like a beautiful musical score playing in his ears, but the One knew he was still far away from celebrating his triumphant victory just yet. "But you have respectfully reminded me of the way that I have chosen to run our House. So I will count your vote as a no to carrying out this campaign against the Choir Boys."

"I know we've spoken of these plans for an incursion in that place time and again before you were locked up and even in the past few weeks with members of the Board—"

"So I will count your vote as no, Old Friend."

"I respectfully submit it as just that, Number One."

Xavier spoke over his shoulder to Percy Harrison without looking at him.

"I am with you, Xavier."

Xavier breathed a sigh of relief. "I've already counted my vote as a yea, which is two votes for the campaign and one against. What say you, Warren?"

"I'll stand with Quincy on this one, Xavier. Your heart is in the right place, but I believe my Second's argument is a more logicality sound one."

"That's two for and two against. Grace, you will cast the deciding vote." Xavier took the time to seek out his Intelligence Officer's face to try to gage where she had stood on the issue. She had always supported him in this manner in the past.

Grace did not hesitate. "We will honor your father's mandate and liberate the tax paying citizens of Carver Housing Projects by bringing those motherfuckers to their knees."

The other four men all gasped at Grace's... _colorful_ choice of an adjective that she chose to express herself, but the tension in the room lessened because of it. _And that was probably your intent, Grace._

If Quincy Morgan had been defeated he did not wear it on his sleeve. "If I may be excused, Number One, I need to contact Ronald Broward, he had always been my choice to lead any assault that we had planned on Carver.

_Good choice_ , Xavier thought. The man looked like the type who would take your lunch money and dared you to stop him while he did it. He also had a long scar on each arm that stretched from elbow to his wrist. Xavier wasn't aware of the tale behind his disfigurement, but the man was lucky to be alive if lost that much blood when this accident or this brutality was forced on him.

Yet, despite the man's horrid exterior, he'd proven to Xavier that his business of killing was a trickling of his true personality. He was an engaging gentleman who had two daughters about the same age as Xavier's boys. He wore a locket around his neck at all times with their baby pictures inside. The leader had watched him open the locket up and gently press his big lips on the picture more than once.

Xavier asked Quincy to hold his water for a minute longer. "Grace, are your people still at their post inside Carver?"

"They are."

"Express to them that I appreciate all of their sacrifices, hard work, and most of all—their patience. None of it has been in vain. Tell them to hold on to the audacity of hope. We are on the way. Tell them that A House in Chains is coming to take back what is rightfully ours."

Grace stood up from her chair as if she'd been launched by cannon and blushed for the second time today. "I will, sir." Grace's smile lit up the room. But then she began to gnaw on her glasses again. "If I may have a word with you in private once we are done here? I hope you remember the small matter I needed to cover with you before we left this campus."

_A small item she says_. He would hate to know what qualified as a cosmic item in Grace Edwards' world. "Gentlemen, if there is nothing more I will leave with this until we are together again. We will accomplish three goals while we carry out this campaign against Bishop and his Choir Boys: We will be keeping to my father's mandates—and just as importantly in my eyes, we will be keeping our word to our followers which is a powerful recruiting tool as we move forward. Secondly, as I've stated countless times before, we will be ridding the citizens of Carver from a cancer. And finally..."

Xavier walked to where Quincy Morgan was standing.

"We will show Serena Tennyson and her Pandora cronies what they are up against if they do not stand down, if they do not disband their ranks, if they do not turn themselves over to local authorities."

He wrapped his arm around Quincy Morgan so that he could face the rest of the Circle.

"Let's show them all who runs this town tonight, tomorrow, and for years to come."

The four of them who were his Circle cheered and whistled and called his name;

And Xavier Prince, the One, the most dangerous man in the world began to stomp and the Circle stomped with him.

"One last thing, Number One," Quincy said before he turned to depart. "A penance must be put in place at Carver when our job there is done."

Xavier peered sharply at the other man as if he'd spit on him.

"Without a penance, Xavier, we are pissing in the wind. We will revisit this road again a year or six months from now. It may be tenement in Chicago or a neighborhood in LA...it may be a return to Carver."

"But the penance guarantees us that there will be no further Carvers." Grace Edwards said in dark voice. "The deterrent will be very real and the mere memory of our response a stark reminder that some things come at too high a price to pay."

Twenty minutes and two cigarettes later he met Grace Edwards on a balcony that overlooked the courtyard that led to the school's auditorium, then out to half of Morehouse's campus. Xavier felt as if this was a piece of the world existed outside of the real planet that they all lived in right now. The garden was full of color, life and fragrance if his nose could be trusted. He had slid his third cigarette out of the pack, but opted not to spoil the scenery or Grace's fresh air with his smoke.

Grace introduced him to a young man and a younger woman who approached from over by the dorms.

Mario Stalls:

He was a light skinned Black man who had dimples. He looked as if he could have been of mixed heritage. He wore both his hair and his shorts too long for Xavier Prince's taste.

Tiffany Spores:

She was a brown skinned 18 or 19 year old teenager whose body was on the fast track into blossoming into womanhood. She wore a tight shirt, tighter jeans, and had a stud earring in her nose.

Xavier shook the young man's hand. Tiffany wouldn't settle for anything less than a hug from him. He did the political thing and asked how they both were doing and what were their short and long term goals as they reached adult hood.

After the small talk concluded the two youngest of the group trailed off on their own separate paths. Though, Tiffany stole another hug from Xavier before prancing off.

Grace watched them for a long time after they walked away. "I appreciate that, Xavier. Mario just recently got his mark and joined our prospects program. He will be casing the neighborhoods near his house on the eastside. There are two elementary schools and a middle school nearby. Quincy and Warren already have him on their radar to fast track up the Peacekeeper ranks. His dad served two tours each in Iraq and Afghanistan. He understands the... _sacrifices_ the military is often asked to make."

"I understand. What about the girl?"

Grace eyes misted a little. "She has a good heart and a gentle spirit. She doesn't have a ton of family and only a few close friends. She's still a virgin. She told me that herself. No one will ever suspect her. They probably won't suspect the two dozen or more of the others either. But none of the others are as an ideal recruit for what our House needs than she is."

Xavier Prince and Grace Edwards watched the two young people, from two entirely into a crowd filled with youth. The world was so young at heart. Xavier couldn't help but to think of his own boys. Suddenly he felt old and very tired.

_Perhaps this is the last generation of color that will know strife like this_. He found that he was having an issue steadying his hand at the prospect of what these young people would be asked to do if and when that fateful time came. _I could really use that cigarette right now._

"I get the impression that you have something else on your mind." He reminded her of what she said to him as the Circle disbanded for the day. "You didn't want to speak of it in front of the others. I think it's time that you spill it?"

Grace tried to put her best face forward but Xavier saw all of the light disappear from her eyes. "I wish it was that simple."

"It is that simple, Grace. Try the most forward and direct path. It saves a lot of time. And it's what you are best at."

"I'm worried."

"That's understandable." Xavier said. "A strong gust of wind whipped past them both carrying the sweet stench of an area brushfire that somehow ruined the serenity that the moment once had. Xavier lit his Newport and exhaled the smoke as far away from Grace as he could. "Quincy's theoretically correct in his assumptions about Carver. The liberation of its residents is by far less strategically vital to us politically as our coming war with Pandora."

Grace nodded. "I agree with you both, but that's not the worry I was speaking of."

Xavier took one more long last drag and doused the flame with his shoe. "I'm fine, Grace. You don't have to expend any more energy than necessary worrying about me."

Xavier followed Grace's gaze to where Warren Washington had jogged over and was now conversing with a school of Peacekeepers near the basketball courts. He had changed into battle gear: He wore a black hoody, khakis, and black boots.

Grace said: "You won't be fine if this Carver campaign as much as hiccups when the Peacekeepers go in. There is a reason why no one has tried to take Bishop, Deacon and all the rest. The way that place is configured. The locked gate to enter in the front; the way the driving lanes reduce themselves from eight, to four, to two in about half a mile. They have what could double as a prison wall bordering the project from the back. They pitch pigeons and have shooters guarding the top of the buildings 24 hours a day."

Xavier had remembered sitting in some of the tactical meetings with Quincy, Grace and Ronald Broward before he had ended up in Calhoun. But the plan that his second had contrived was technically all-encompassing, strategically sound, bold, daring, and just audacious enough to work. There would be Peacekeeper casualties most certainly. But at the conclusion of the day the ends would definitely justify the means.

"Anyway, whether we succeed or not at Carver I am going to reiterate to you that you must not turn your back on Quincy Morgan or Warren Washington or anyone else closely associated with the former New Black Panther Party."

"I won't."

She wasn't finished.

There's more isn't it, Grace.

"What else is wrong?"

Grace pushed one of her braids out of her eye. "Your brother's stepdaughter has gone missing."

"Erica? When did this happen?"

"I can't pinpoint a specific day, but it was had to be just before 411 and your release from Calhoun."

Xavier pointed Grace in the direction of an old wooden bench. After they sat down, he smoothed out his slacks.

"There is certainly no love lost between those two. And Denise often complicates things more than making them better." He looked at Grace Edwards. "Is she still alive?"

"I wish I knew for certain, Xavier." Grace said quietly. "Your ex sister in law hired a private detective, a Roxanne Sanchez, to find her daughter. Ms. Sanchez is ruthless. She is efficient. I like her. If Erica Lovings can be found this woman will find her; I'm certain of that."

Xavier stood quickly and fastened the buttons on his jacket. He was struggling with the top button when Grace rose and helped him. She also straightened his tie for him. That look that Xavier saw in her eyes before had returned...and gave him pause.

"If there is anything more, I hope that you will share it with me."

"Julian Moore is dead."

" _What_ ," All of the dread Xavier was feeling boiled to the surface. "How...we must not have gotten all of James Carter's men. They must have moved on him after—"

Grace planted a gentle but firm hand on his chest. "No, that's not it at all, Xavier. In his own mind Julian was trying to become a reformed gang banger. He had taken the mark, said the words. He had given you his word to follow your father's mandates as best he could." She said. "But he was still just a gang banger in the eyes of his enemies who shared the same skin color that he did."

"Damn, are you telling me that the Choir Boys got him?"

"They did." She nodded once and again and lowered her head. "You and I have spoken before about our need to rescue the good people who are suffocating under the choke hold of the Bishop and the Choir Boys. But I didn't want to announce Julian's murder in front of the others so they would wrongly think that you were motivated into acting by a sense of loyalty to a man who had protected you more than once while you were at Calhoun."

Grace Edwards was right of course, she was _always_ right when it came to the complicated matters of state. Now that Ernestine was gone he would lean on her consultation and her expertise more than ever before. _Damn you, Julian_ , he felt tears sting at the corners of his eyes. They were unexpected and unwanted. He bit them back but Grace had already grabbed him and pulled him into her embrace.

"I appreciate your confidentially." He said in a matter of fact tone and broke her grip. "I'm grateful for everything that you have done here today. You honor your House and you honor me."

They found themselves staring at each other in the minutes that passed. He could see his charcoal colored skin, sideburns and drunkard eyes in the reflection in her eyes. Likewise, he glared at her dark skin, her braids, and the look in her big brown eyes. She was a little slim for his taste and he liked a little red beans with his rice—a little sleek and nasty in his female and he couldn't imagine this woman being like that at all.

Finally, he said: "We are only to unleash this...what is it called... _Scar_ campaign against the Rooster only in retaliation for the imminent threat of this Whirlwind being released on us." He shook his head in mild disgust. "Although, even with all of your skills and resources, we still don't know exactly what this Whirlwind is."

"No," She admitted it to him. "But we only get one chance...and one chance _only_ for Scar to be as effective as it needs to be."

"So it's our only way of winning against Pandora."

Grace's voice took on that dark tone again. "Scar isn't about winning, sir, it's only about giving voice to a message that will be to grave for them to ever ignore our cause ever again."

He exhaled deeply. "What an entangled web Quincy Morgan weaves for us."

"Xavier, Quincy Morgan may has the greatest talent for controlled aggression and violence that I have ever seen. He is also very good for the originality of our campaign's names." She flashed the ever slightest look of pride in her eyes. "But the devil and the details in both our coming operations are all _mine_."
Chapter Eight

If Louis Keaton were to be unleashed on the public again without proper, professional supervision, I am convinced that the results would be catastrophic.

-Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree's patient notes (private) in October 2000
Louis

**Red Wine Road (East Point), 10** th **Day**

He watched.

He waited.

Moses Jackson's grandmother dragged the 12 year old boy and his two younger siblings to an old crusty Baptist church early that cool spring morning. The routine hadn't altered much since he'd started scouting this particular boy out about six weeks ago.

Felicia Jackson:

She was a fair skinned black woman in her early 60's. She had dark circles under her eyes and wore her dentures and her stockings everywhere she went.

And the show would always begin as she was leaving the old shot gun house with her grand kids. The older woman saying to her daughter, Moses mother, that someone in this house needed to give God some time back in return for all that he had provided them. Tracy Jackson would argue back that He shouldn't expect a whole lot of visits from her then. She cursed out loud. God or Jesus hadn't provided her with much over the past few years except these begging ass children all ways in the need of something she didn't have. Matter of fact, she yelled as her mother closed the screen door and walked away with the kids, she'd be fuckin impressed if He dropped off a man at her crib who had a good job. That would impress the hell out of her.

By the time that one sided conversation had ended Louis slid back into his Ford. _A man is_ _coming into your life, Felicia. And We do have a good job. You'll see_. Per usual, Tracy Jackson stormed out of that same screened in porch after her mother and the kids left, and was already out for her daily grind.

Tracy Jackson:

She was a shapely dark skinned Black woman in her early 30's that had straight hair and she dressed the same every day: She wore a cut off shirt at the midriff that highlighted her tattoos and her stomach and lower back, tight enough pants to cause a yeast infection, and shoes bearing a six inch heal. The grind didn't change as she continued her search where she left off from the day before...and the day before that—of a trick and then a hit of some crack or weed.

Sunday mornings were the worse for Tracy. That's probably why she always had such an attitude with her mother before the older woman left for church. Traffic flowing through the neighborhood was the slowest all week on Sunday mornings. And if she did manage to get some guy off and pocket some money, then trying to find one of her dealers took some doing as well. Even the most religious drug pusher had to sleep some time or the other, especially with Friday and Saturday nights being so prosperous and all. And the weather was warming up too which was great for the drug and the skin trade.

Louis knew that Tracy was running low on cash with the days approaching the middle of the month. It didn't take rocket science to figure that between her mother's social security and Tracy's welfare, that money was tight under the most ideal circumstances.

These weren't ideal circumstances.

Louis abandoned his usual routine of following Felicia and the kids and stayed after Tracy this morning. She had walked down one of the alleys and behind the dumpster. The neighborhood was circular by design with rows upon rows of shotgun houses all in some need of work or paint needed on them. Louis had seen men of his color drive down here every so often. Most of these men were legitimate business types: Salesmen, Insurance Brokers, Bails Bondsmen, and even some undercover police. And it amazed Louis that no matter how dangerous the neighborhood was the drug pusher code was the same during the day: Hands off Whitey unless he backs you into a situation where you have no other choice.

Yet, all bets were off when the lights came on. _It is the twilight and shadow syndrome_. The voice inside him said. Four Pandora agents had to sprint down and rescue him when he got cornered by a group of gang members a week ago. Those young men never knew what hit them when the bullets tore through the soft tissue in the back of their heads. _We weren't afraid though_. _We would have handled ourselves_... _defended ourselves even if the cavalry hadn't arrived_. Louis told himself that the other voice was a liar. He had been scared. He still had the trembling hands, the cotton mouth and the piss on his pants to prove it.

Still, Danielle Rohm offered him a pretty smile—and more importantly a change of clothes as the other Pandora agents dragged the fresh corpses away. Shooter had taken the young men out from at least 200 feet away. Louis was thankful that Serena had put together men and women with such a variance of skills and talents within Pandora. But no one had the lethal range and the means to spout off kills like the little girl dressed in black.

The neighborhoods of downtown Atlanta hadn't changed much since his first round of raptures 30 years earlier. He saw the same trash low income housing areas, the same potholes in the roads, and worst of all the exact same hopelessness imbedded in the faces of the people who lived down here.

One thing had changed though.

He saw young men and several women as well, dressed in khaki suits and sneakers running pockets of drug dealers off of the corners. The confrontations were often mismatches. The Peacekeepers were always victorious. Some of the residents would actually walk out into the streets and cheer them. One night, several weeks back before 411, he saw a group surround three Peacekeepers and started hopping up and down while they chanted _we have a vision, we have a vision..._

Louis drove away as fast as the F150 would take him that night.

Yet, he had always come back. He had been given a job to do by Serena Tennyson and it was very unwise to displease the head of Pandora too often. So he got to the business at hand.

He came close to grabbing Moses two days ago as he walked home from middle school. The opportunity was there, but he had blown it. Moses had run straight home as his grandmother had instructed him to. Since Serena's announcement on Thomas Pepper's blog, Felicia Jackson would often leave her home and begin walking towards the school where each child came home from. The walking was difficult for her considering her arthritic hip and other ailments. Also the younger kids got out of school an hour before Moses did and she barely got back home, caught her breath, before it was time to venture out again.

But that afternoon, two days ago, had presented the best opportunity that Louis had yet to grab the boy. Moses best friend had stayed home with a bug. He would be walking alone and even if the old woman started walking to meet him, she would not get to him in time. What _did_ save him is that some neighborhood kids were playing kickball on a side street about four blocks from his home. And no matter how disciplined a 12 year old may be, he was still just 12 years old and the game was too much of a good time to pass up.

The temptation earned Louis a spanking from Felicia that day, arthritis and all.

And it saved you from Us...for now.

Tracy Jackson had been waiting all evening for a regular John to show up at the house so she sent Moses, as she often did, to meet her dealer for a rock. Moses had met the young man, who was probably four years older than he was, countless times before and knew right where to go. He had tears in his eyes and hated this task. He knew his grandmother wouldn't allow it, but she had already left for her Bible study meeting at the church, and wouldn't be returning until it was late. Tracy knew this as well and that's why she always scheduled these rendezvous at her house through the week on Wednesdays and Fridays. And Tracy could put it on them too. She could satisfy three of four men in the two to two in half hours his grandmother would be out of the house.

The John was driving up now, so Tracy slapped her oldest child upside his head and gave him another slap on his rump, cursed at him to get on his way.

When the screen door closed behind him, Louis vowed that he would at least never have to return to this specific hell again.

If Serena Tennyson and Pandora were going to exploit his talents the way she was exploiting Danielle Rohm and all the others then so be it. He would be happy to use their money and resources so he could engage in the pleasure that he had been born to engage in.

This was no different than when the Caretaker had commanded him to do the same thing 30 years earlier. In both cases, the political and social ideologies were well past his ability to completely understand them all. He did understand what to do with these boys after he had picked them from the streets.

And just as before, Louis Keaton had six of them already of his scope of vision. He had their routines and habits and their family's routines and habits rounded into memory. He had the locations, the point of rapture mapped out and his necessary escape routes available to him whenever he needed to fetch them from thought.

Louis knew, just like years earlier, that he wanted... _no, We needed_...to capture his General first. He wanted a boy of outstanding character and discipline who would watch over the other boys once he had captured them all. The general would help keep them quiet, calm and safe.

Moses Jackson would be his general for this generation of abducted boys just as Christopher Prince had been his first general when his first rapture began all those years ago.

When the boy had cleared the first street Louis Keaton made his move.

He waited patiently until Moses made his buy from the drug dealer. Louis needed him to advance quickly out of this little sector of hell and start walking down the block. This street, with its low lighting and narrow streets, actually would have served Louis better to grab the boy unseen but anywhere that significant narcotic activity took place, there was an increased opportunity of Peacekeeper interference. Louis didn't need that kind of headache. He was running low on chances to get this thing started. Serena Tennyson had insisted on the operation beginning _now_.

Louis knew that snatching the other boys would be a breeze by comparison. It had been three decades since he had tried to hold a group of boys together. He had the pleasure of a single boy here and two brothers there, but not a collection as was needed to satisfy the Dragon Woman and her brood.

Suddenly all of the brief sessions that he had with Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree came back to him. She had asked him how he felt when these urges washed over him. She had instructed him on how he should fight back against them. She had smiled at him with her fake lips and told him that he was no less human for having these feelings, what dehumanized him was his inability to overcome them once he recognized they were on him in full.

Serena, on the other hand, balled up her fist the last time he saw her and told him to embrace his urges. _She told the truth about Us, Louis_. _We are a magnificent creature._ _We are a_ _blunt instrument. But mostly we have been kept at bay for far too long. We need to feed. Dupree-Hicks would bury us forever. She is a fool. We will feed again. Dinner's on._

The good doctor's influence hadn't waned however. In his mind's eyes he could see her pleading with him to return to his F150 and drive away. She yelled at him to remember the dead and the dying that happened because of his miscues last time. She reminded him that he was a molester, a pedophile...a butt fucker, but he was _not_ a killer. And if he took Moses Jackson here and now, he would get his pleasure but he would eventually have to kill them as he had been instructed to kill the other boys before.

_Don't listen to Dupree- Hicks. We won't allow the situation to erode like it did the last time. Moses is stronger than Christopher had been_. And what saved him...and started the ball of death rolling for the other boys was dumb luck anyway. _That ain't happening this time; it just ain't._

Moses Jackson dropped his mother's bag of rock on the ground, gave his dark surroundings a once over and stooped down to scoop it up—

And Louis Keaton was away from his F150 like a blur of light with his phony badge in his hand. He was _yelling_...but not too loudly about how much trouble the boy was in. Moses tried to drop the baggie again but it was too late for that. The police had seen you with it in your possession. And everyone knew what the police did with 12 year old Black boys who were in possession of rock cocaine. Moses cried and nodded his head. He probably didn't know, but he surely had been taught to always agree with an officer of the law, especially when he caught you with the goods on you.

Moses Jackson was a smart kid; in fact the 12 year old was brilliant. Although he attended a failing school that was short of resources, funds, teachers who gave a damn and mostly illiterate kids he was excelling. And even though he'd been assigned to high school equivalent classes and arguably was the smartest kid in the whole school he allowed himself to get caught doing _this._

But after Moses let the moment and his bad situation sink in—some of that intelligence seeped through. He asked Louis if he were a cop where was his gun? He asked why he wasn't calling his back up in. And then he said respectfully, but firmly, why they would put a man as old as he was on such a dangerous beat in a neighborhood like this one.

Louis Keaton found the strength, quickness and resolve that he thought he left behind years earlier to snatch Moses and throw his ass into the passenger side of the truck. He worked quickly but steadily, he gagged Moses and roped his feet and hands together and stuffed him down on the floor board all without drawing any attention.

Louis got himself over to the driver side, closed the heavy door, latched his seat belt on and drove off without speeding. He turned onto one main road, then to another and then another at a moderate rate of acceleration. He checked his rear view mirrors and saw that no one was following him including Pandora agents. Serena had explained to him that they would no longer be sent out with him since the scouting phase had concluded and the Rapture phase had begun.

Louis pushed the F150 harder when he drove the truck up on the entrance ramp and eventually onto I 20 heading parallel out of the main part of the city, towards the sanctuary that he had created for Moses and the other children. _And We has built many rooms in this mansion. And after the rapture of his flock, they will spend an eternity together._

We've done so well.

Much later, hours after the Pandora agents helped pull a crying Moses Jackson from his truck, Louis Keaton allowed himself a deep exhale of a breath he hadn't known he was holding and he threw up. He walked inside the sanctuary. Serena had promised him that her hand full of agents would allow him adequate space to do what needed to be done. _And We have held up our_ _end of the bargain and we will make sure the witch of a Dragon Woman does the same_. Serena Tennyson was proving to be as efficient as and even far more ruthless than the Caretaker had been.

And although no one would trade Serena's cold passionless persona for Caretaker's compassion and love of humanity, Louis had to believe that between the two of them that somehow they would be able to pull all of this off without the senseless deaths that occurred the first time around.

_Yes,_ the voice inside said as the first stir of his manhood inside of pants this evening occurred. There would be plenty of time for that soon enough. _You are stronger than Chris ever was, Moses. You won't force Serena too command Us to kill the other boys who will soon be joining us here._

We've chosen well.

We're sure of it.
Roxanne

**Carver Street Apartments (Summer Hill), 10** th **Day**

The liberation of Carver had begun.

And while it wasn't _her_ war per say it would be affecting her if she didn't move out of one its many apartments soon.

At first all she had heard were a few bangs and pops of scattered gunfire. Those sounds were more common around here than the sound of children laughing and playing. This was Carver after all. But then there was the screeching of tires followed by another round of bangs, pops, and cries of men dying. It some odd way it had reminded Roxanne Sanchez of her childhood growing up with Maria and her parents in the old broken down shack that had once been her beloved home a few blocks from here. This evening was like New Year's Eve all over again. The closer to midnight the hour got the louder and more frequent the sounds of New Year's Day drew closer. _And that gunfire and the killing is getting closer minute by freaking minute, where is he—_

So far Councilwoman's prognosis of the offensive had been on target. The Peacekeepers had engaged in a full-fledged assault that senior militias across the world would have been challenged to mimic. The problem was that she'd been caught behind enemy lines when the campaign had been engaged and it had slowed her investigation to a near stall ever since.

_And I was getting closer to some answers._ Roxanne slid over to the window of the otherwise empty apartment for a quick look down the street. The usual early evening activities of drug sales, pimping out the younger hoes and maybe even a quick game of craps while you could still see the numbers had ceased to exist. She'd seen a lot of running back and forth. Mothers were grabbing their children and making a break for cover. The dealers were on the phone trying to find out what in the hell was going on up in the front.

_And I'm stuck in here, waiting_. The Prince family had paid well and on time but they both had been a pain in her ass. First, there was Denise Prince, who had originally hired her. The lady was a head case at best with her moodiness and downright hostility at times, especially around Chris. Her ex-husband was loyal maybe even to a fault to his former family, but it was clear that both of them were hiding a secret that might have been the final nail in the coffin of their marriage. _And its and ugly secret too,_ Roxanne thought and pulled the curtain back further for a larger look see down the street. _It was something that nearly destroyed_ you, _Chris, not just your marriage._

And now Xavier Prince, Chris younger brother had deployed this offensive today... _right now_ that made an already difficult search even more dangerous.

She heard the bolt on the lock unlatch on the front door. She brought her Nine up to greet the unwelcomed visitor.

Andre Knight opened the door and slid inside. He locked the bottom lock, bolted the middle one and even swung the chain over into place up top. He was out of breath and looked as if he'd seen the mountain top for himself.

"They're dudes dying out there," He told her between bits of heavy breathing.

Andre Knight:

He was a scrawny, dark skinned Black man who had graduated high school a year after she did. He was so long and so lean in fact, that Roxanne would have sworn on a pile of Bibles that if he were any skinner she would be able to see behind him. He wore too much grease in his hair and a well-manicured goatee surrounded a mouth full of beaver teeth. He'd acted like a spoiled punk in high school and age hadn't improved his standing with her one bit.

"They'll be one dying in here if you've lied to me." She had 'Dre pinned to that same front door with all of the locks in place with the back of her forearm. She hadn't pointed her gun at him _yet_. "Where is this contact you promised me? You said that someone in him saw Erica Prince after the day that most people think she went missing."

"Calm your nerves, Girlfriend." Andre said and pushed himself away from the door and out of her grip in a single motion. "There is a shooting war going down in the hood in case you ain't keeping up with current events. Things like that can add to a man's travel time. I wasn't nowhere near up front and struggled to get here. My man had further to go." He closed the curtains. "He'll be here."

Roxanne rolled her eyes at her old schoolmate and sighed in exasperation. She did not do waiting well. _Patience is not a normal human virtue, Senorita._ Victor had once told her after he'd made her body tremble with pleasure. _You are good at what you do. Yet, you must make patience an ally if you truly want to excel._ And her own inner voice countered: _And I suspect that you are exercising that patience right now...in an attempt to find me, Victor._

And so his words that he had text her echoed in her soul;

Someday, when the time is right, Gonzales and I will stop what we are doing here...and find you.

I will see you suffer for what you have done here down below.

Roxanne Sanchez knew she would rather face a thousand Peacekeeper liberations than one Victor Castillo.

That was at least until 'Dre had told her what he'd seen so far.

The Peacekeepers had used two old vans to ram through the check in point at the front gate. Everyone knew that 'security' was bought and paid for by Bishop and his Choir boys. Dre said that one of the fools even had the nerve to go for his pistol but one of the Peacekeepers' riding shot gun in the opposite van shot just above his earlobe killing him on the spot. The other played it smart—at least at first, by hitting a silent alarm that notified the Ushers that they had company.

Dre stopped his tale long enough to pull a brew from his fridge and chugged half of it down in one gulp. Roxanne frowned at him when he dared offer her one. _Men and their vices_ , still she urged him to continue. They might as well do something constructive while they waited on this contact to arrive.

He said that the 'Boys followed procedure...but it didn't help them much. Bishop had prepared himself for the one day that the APD grew a pair and came after him. He would use the narrow streets that went from eight lanes when you entered the complex that reduced themselves to four, two and eventually one for every two blocks of cross streets to his advantage. He also had some Ushers that would climb up to the top of damn near 12 or 15 apartment tops. They would serve two purposes while they were up there: They would pitch pigeons to help blind Ushers on the ground know where the cops were heading—and they could snipe any pig that was traveling by foot.

Roxanne felt a lump in her throat.

"That doesn't sound to promising for anyone trying to flush Bishop out of here?"

"And you would normally be right, Girlfriend," Dre finished his beer and missed the garbage can when he flipped it at the basket adding to the already filthy surroundings. _How do_ _you live like this_? "But we ain't talking about the APD or even Five-O. Bishop or nobody else ain't ever seen nothing like _this_."

Four school buses rushed into the open space that the van had created. Two veered to the right side while the other two somehow made the curve and headed to the left. One Peacekeeper after the other, after the other...after the _other_ marched off of those buses until, Dre couldn't be sure, but there had to damn well 200 men and women in all were on Carver streets taking cover and taking names. They were dressed in the classic gear that world had come to know them for: khaki pants and black tee shirts or khaki suits. The difference today is that they all wore skeleton mask to protect their identities like they were some real life superheroes or something Dre guessed.

A gunshot fired loud enough that Roxanne jumped and Dre went to the floor. She stayed low enough not to be caught in any direct crossfire and got over to where the host was.

Roxanne, reluctantly, had often turned to this bastard since she'd been back in Hot Atlanta when her cases veered off the linear path. He'd proven useful...especially if your cash flow was right. And 24 hours ago he'd called her and told her that he had a contact who had mentioned Erica's physical description to a tee, knew about her hoeing around with Trey Davis, and even mentioned her possible sexual relationship with a young woman who was hooked up with an Usher. Roxanne had learned that leaning of Andre Knight for information down here usually generated results.

It didn't mean she had to like him.

"As long as you understand one thing," She had forearmed him to his upswept tile this time. The dirt was shining in his greasy head. "If you've betrayed me or wasted my time in any way, I'll make you wish you hadn't lived long enough to regret it."

Dre looked the part of a cockroach that had been flipped on his back. Yet, he had managed to escape her clutches again and had sat himself just under the window sill.

"Betray you," He wiped the dirt off of his too big shirt. His greasy hair might take the rest of the decade so he let it ride for now. "Girlfriend, we go all the way back to elementary school. You wouldn't give a playa the time of day back then but I've always had your back."

"Let me correct you," She crawled to where he was again and sat close enough to smell the booze on his breath. He would not escape her again. "I've know you too long and having my back has always been defined by me either paying you or fucking you. And I'd rob the Bishop himself first before I'd let that latter half happen again, Dre."

More shot rang out. Roxanne heard a window shatter. _They're getting closer; we are_ _running out of time_. Finding Erica and...potentially giving her the justice she deserved was running on fumes as well.

Dre soothed the moment and her nerves over again, if only momentarily when he finished telling his tale. "Girlfriend, I ain't got to the good part yet. Two dozen or so Peacekeepers busted through apartment doors and sprayed the inside with gunfire. Pockets of Choir Boys would show up from down the street or around a corner cursing and shooting, but they were no match for the semi and fully automatic weapons of the Peacekeepers."

The campaign was far from flawless. One of the buses stalled before it reached its rightful destination and 20 or 30 of Xavier's men had to run half a block to reach the next row of apartments. A couple of Usher's who were still on top the rooftops picked a handful off as they tried to exit the idled bus. There were more than a few hand to hand, and knife to hand battles in the middle of the street, in the dark alleys and in private doorways. A civilian woman, whose weight was all behind her, was shot in the crossfire when she tried to rush what must have been her elderly father to safety. Another man with weenie arms, a beer belly and chicken legs was run over when he stepped out in front of the bus as soon as the driver got it going again.

But then the Peacekeepers took control of those first two sections of Carver. Three Wheelers rolled in by the dozen. There were two riders per vehicle. While one steered the other fired rounds at any and everything that moved that wasn't wearing khakis and black tee shirts. With another wave of Peacekeepers on the ground the snipers were nullified and then eliminated with extreme prejudice. One was shot and Dre said that he fell from the rooftop nearly to the asphalt nearly where he was standing.

"But it didn't stop there, Girlfriend." Dre shook his head. His eyes were two unblinking street lights. For all of the things that Andre Knight was not, Roxanne Sanchez could say that he was _cool_. The punk in him wasn't faking or fabricating. What he saw in those few minutes before he arrived here and sealed himself inside his apartment had scared the hell out of him.

Dre said that he watched a man bigger than most stand climb atop one of the vans that had crashed through the front gates into the housing project. "He was a pretty big man but that's not what I remember most about him." Dre said trying to mask the fear in his voice. "He was the only one of them wearing a sleeveless black tee shirt that had no ample room for a vest underneath. But Roxanne, he had a long scar on each arm that stretched from his elbow to his wrist. And he..."

"What did he do? Andre?" Roxanne wanted to know.

"He pulled a machete from what seemed out of nowhere. I look up again and there were, I don't know, maybe 20 or 25 others who were carrying machetes too."

Andre Knight said the scarred man pointed at all of those sneakers hanging from the wires marking Choir Boy territory, the way a dog pisses on a bush. And then The Scarred Man said at the top of his voice: _Our adversaries proclaim themselves Choir Boys. They have_ _Ushers...they have a Deacon...I even hear that they are blessed with the presence of a Bishop_. The Scarred man's words were greeted with laughter from his troops, his Peacekeepers. _Well today I have visualized his people's future._ And Dre said he heard a single voice...with a woman's tone ask from her skeleton mask: _And tell us what do you see, Admiral_. The Scarred Man found who had asked the question and his smile threw a shining light on the entire world. I _see a day_...this _day, filled with misery and pain_.

And the Peacekeepers one and all...all and one, begin to stomp.

But the Scarred Man was not finished. When his troops had quieted enough to allow him to speak into a setting sun, he said: _If there is a Bishop and a Deacon and Ushers and Choir Boys...then this must be Paradise._

Andre Knight watched the Scarred man pull a locket from underneath his tee shirt, kiss it affectionately and say: Then I say that we should storm Heaven.

He hopped effortlessly off of the van and charged up a stairwell with his machete drawn. The others who possessed the blades matched his movement and did the same, pouring into one apartment and it seemed to the storyteller, at random to the next one.

And Andre Knight had run for his life.

That was 30 minutes ago.

What sounded like an explosion rocked the building underneath their feet. Roxanne Sanchez had gathered her druthers first. "What did they do with these machetes, Dre? How did they know what apartments to crash? I know that everyone in this complex is not a dealer or a member of The Choir Boys? Dre, are you even listening to me?"

"Of course I'm hearing you, Girlfriend." Dre dared look out the window. Two Choir Boys darted by, but they were then cut down in a hail of bullets. "Look, I didn't stay around long enough to see the end of the movie. The opening credits were enough for me as it was."

She had enough of this man—so she snatched him by the collar and the skin underneath. He would not escape her this time for sure.

" _Damn, Girlfriend, what's happened to you?"_ He screamed over the gunfire drawing closer and closer still. "Look, Roxanne, we've done business before. You have never been this hard. You are starting to act like that crazy ass sister of yours. Don't act like you don't remember that crazy bitch fighting day in and day out. Anyway, whatever happened—"

Roxanne planted the butt of her Nine against his big lips in a quiet plea for him to be silent. "Look, Dre, we are not going to talk about Maria. We are not going to talk about what you had for breakfast this morning. We're not even going to talk about the Peacekeepers who could knock that door down any moment and kill us both—"

And there was a _knock_ on that exact door.

And the knocking became more persistent—and then desperate.

"Open the door, Dre, it's me." A voice said.

"My man," Andre flashed a million dollar smile.

Roxanne allowed him to get to his feet and it took a minute for him to unlatch the door from all of its locks. He opened up the door...

...and a White man walked through the threshold.

There was a White man walking through the front door at Carver Street Housing Project...here...now.

Roxanne Sanchez said blankly: "You're a White—"

"Champion," And he put his white hand out for Roxanne to shake it. "My name is Joseph Champion actually not White. A dozen rounds of gunfire passed nearby. Roxanne thought that a couple of the bullets struck the front door where this...Joseph Champion had stood only seconds earlier. "Andre was supposed to explain to you who I was."

Joseph Champion:

Roxanne thought that he was average height, weight, but he seemed smaller with his face buried underneath an overabundance of unruly brown hair, bush eyebrows, and a meaty goatee.

"I'm not interested in anything about you beyond what you can tell me about the disappearance of Erica Lovings." She was _very_ interested in everything about this man in fact, and how he came to Carver, but she neither had the time or patients to pursue such an investigation.

Two more shots struck the apartment next door to this one. A third shot shattered the glass by the window sill. All three of them ducked for cover behind the dining room table, Champion using his wits, turned the table over to shield them better against anymore bullets that could pop through that opened window.

Roxanne stood up just enough to see...the three wheelers driving up with the white vans and the school buses slowly bringing up the rear. _They're here,_ she thought, nearing panic. She spied the shadows of figures growing larger as they approach their position. The first rider off of a three wheeler was a loan man wearing a black tee shirt and cursed with a long scar running the length of ear arm from the palm of his hand to his elbow.

The Scarred Man had unsheathed his machete.

Champion was still talking. "I might be able to do more than just tell you about Erica Lovings, Roxanne. May I call you, Roxanne?"

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

Before Champion could answer a handful of shots strike the apartment above them. All parties accounted for push their selves as low to the floor as their individual frames allow. She made herself larger—and more vulnerable to gunfire, so she can scoot over to where her old classmate was covering his greasy head.

"Andre... _Andre_ , I need you to think harder than you ever have before" Roxanne said.

"What?"

"We know that A House in Chains sent the Peacekeepers to root out the Choir Boys. We know that many of them live here in Carver. We also know that many of these units are used in the production of crack cocaine." Roxanne spoke slowly to Andre as if she had grown up but had left him back in elementary school. "There are no fools running the Circle. Just like you told me when you walked in here they are killing people out there. The Peacekeepers must be using some barometer to flag where their enemies are. They knew exactly where the combatants and the crack houses were before they even boarded those buses and crashed through that front gate." Roxanne grabbed Andre Knight one last time. "I need to know what they are using to identify these enemy positions, Dre, and I need to know right _now_."

Andre looked to the heavens in thought.

He blinked rapidly...his mind processing everything he'd seen...and anything he _might_ have seen.

And then he had her answer.

"I saw red stripes painted on the front doors of the units. I'd never seen them there before." Roxanne got to her feet, danger be damned, and sprinted as fast as her long legs would take her to the window sill. "I thought they were marking them some for a paint job down the road or something."

_Something_ is right, She bent as far as she could...nearly falling out of the window. A bullet sailed by her and struck the wall nearby.

And then Roxanne saw it.

There was a big red slash on the door where the three of them were hiding behind.

She was all the way back inside...and on top of Andre in a flash. She finally had her Nine pointed at _him_ now.

"Andre, why is there a red painted stripe on your door?"

"There isn't one."

She hit him in the chin with the pistol.

"I just looked out of the door, Andre." She said in a voice that far more patient and calm than she felt. She could feel Champion looking on, wanting answers from Andre as well.

"That ain't my door, girlfriend. This ain't my crib."

" _What_?"

"Man, we were talking about Erica Lovings and her potentially having something to do with an Usher. Everybody down here knows you been asking questions about that girl. I couldn't have anyone seeing you—no matter how fat your ass is—walking out of my place whiles you asking about that dyke. So I stole—I mean, I found this key and used this place only for show, until I could hook you up with old Stoney here."

Roxanne helped him up partially. Then she crawled through the apartment that wasn't Andre's after all, and made it to the bedroom.

One hell of a large crack lab stared back at her.

" _Son of a Bitch_ ," She yelled, nearing tears.

Andre Knight and Joseph Champion, thunder and lighting, ran into the room as well.

"I didn't know, Roxanne." Dre said. "I swear I didn't know."

"Let's get the hell out of here." Champion looked at her.

" _No_ ," That single word drew both of their silent ire after she said it. "We're not going anywhere yet. Roxanne was hot with Andre, but she at least understood why he did what he did. More shots rang out. Someone sounded as if they were right outside the front door. She drew her Nine on the other man instead. "I take back what I said to you earlier...Joseph Champion is it? Yea, sure, you can call me Roxanne if you like. I _do_ need to know you. I need to know if I can take your word at face value and I need to know right this minute. First, what is your story, Champion? Tell me the extra short version."

There was a cry from someone outside the door for God to save them but two gunshots later left the man heading towards eternity without an answer.

"I may die tonight, Champion." Roxanne choked back tears. If she was going to join the man outside—and the many others who died in Carver today, she damned wouldn't go weeping like bitch in front of a punk like Andre and some stranger who needed a shave and haircut.

"I am with Pandora." His lip quivered beneath the hair. "At least I was."

She cocked the hammer.

"Whoa," Champion put his hands up. "You asked a question and I answered. Roxanne, I was a mole...I _am_ a mole. I'm in hiding from Serena. You won't need that gun...at least for me."

Roxanne processed the information as fast as her brain allowed her to. She considered her limited options. She knew her time was nearly out. "Alright, Champion," Roxanne said, but she kept her Nine trained on his forehead all the same. "If you truly are a mole, I can't think of a better place in the world to hide from everyone...Pandora, A House in Chains and the FBI. I can buy that. I don't buy why you are connected to Erica Lovings."

"I know where she is, Roxanne. I can take you to her." He said. "I'll be straight with you: I didn't have any reason to come forward to you or anyone else with this information before." Champion peered over his shoulder when he heard a voice say, _I am an Admiral in the_ _Peacekeepers. In the name of Xavier Prince, I demand that you open this door and admit me...or_ _I will have it torn from its hinges_. "But as you can see, I will no longer be able to hide here. Even in the unlikeliness that we survive whatever is on the other side of that door, Carver will be filled with police and FBI and reporters for weeks to come. I will be discovered."

Champion stepped close enough for Roxanne to see that there was plenty of salt to go with the cinnamon in his beard. "Give me your word that you will continue to hide me when we—"Roxanne heard the door knocked down in the front room. "If we survive the night and I will take you to Erica Lovings."

"How do I know I can trust you?"

"How do I know I can trust _you,_ Roxanne?"

Andre Knight kept a small pistol for the times his punk ass mouth wrote checks that his scrawny ass couldn't cash. Roxanne gave Joseph Champion her .22 that she kept strapped to her shin in case she had exhausted her clips for her Nine in a pinch.

She turned towards the living room area again.

The Scarred Man had said at the top of his voice not so long ago: _Our adversaries_ _proclaim themselves Choir Boys. They have Ushers...they have a Deacon...I even hear that they are blessed with the presence of a Bishop._ And when his troops had quieted enough to allow him to speak into a setting sun, he said: _If there is a Bishop and a Deacon and Ushers and Choir Boys...then this must be Paradise._

Then he said that the Peacekeepers should storm Heaven.

Roxanne sprinted around the corner—gun in hand—and rushed to meet him there.

And then she let God have His will.
Angel

**North Desert Drive, Atlanta, 11** th **Day**

Make sure you secure the crime scene.

Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan's instructions still resonated inside of Angel's head nearly an hour after he had stated them to Christopher and her before they left the field office for North Desert Drive. _Or is it the banging inside your skull from a whopper of a hangover you're_ _really feeling._ Angel had retired early last night after some Jack Daniels, or was it that she had passed out?

Anyway, she now threw the newer rental car into park and buried her thoughts into the latest crisis in a series of them since she'd arrived in this city. A local camerawoman using social media had texted that a barrage of reports had flooded her station's office with something big having been discovered in the lower eastside of downtown. Sheridan couldn't or wouldn't elaborate further, but dispatched the old childhood friends to the heavily wooded area they were arriving at now.

_Camerawoman huh...maybe...just maybe, Sheridan wasn't quite the Boy Scout who was only married to his work after all_. Angel thought.

Christopher had already unbuckled his seatbelt and was preparing to launch himself up out of the seat when she grabbed him by the elbow—

"Ask Sheridan to reassign you." She said. "Please, do it while there is still time."

Christopher's hairless brows shot up on his dark face. "Reassign me? What in the hell are you talking about, Doc?"

Angel nudged her head at the door; he got her silent message and slammed it shut. Uniformed cops had already done their jobs and roped the area off, probably setting the perimeter further out from ground zero more than they needed to. _That's a wise move_. Civilians, most of them People of Color, were already starting to line up along the boundaries trying to get a closer look at what was on the other side. Angel leaned into her friend. "You should ask to lead the investigations that will wrap up the 411 attacks...anything but _this."_ She looked out of the window towards whatever secrets were hidden beyond those boundaries. "You're not going to want to see what's in there. I don't have to remind you of what happened to you all of those years ago. You're not as prepared as you think you are to deal with what you may see over there."

"Angel, we don't know—"

"We _do_ know, Christopher." She squeezed his wrist harder than she had intended. "We know that Rapture is Serena's attempt to go after the city's Children of Color. She showed Thomas Pepper the yellow rose and we both know all the symbolism and history that goes with that. We also know that she has a major tool in the box in Louis Keaton to pull this off. He's done this kind of thing before."

Chris nodded slowly. "In speaking of the roses, Sheridan had a forensic team run some test on them. They didn't identify any contraband. Serena probably picked them at random somewhere on the route to Pepper's townhome that day." He gave her a hard look. "But you don't really deal in the substantive do you, Doc? You live and work outside the box. This is about suggestion and inquiry for you?"

A part of her wished that he was being sarcastic, but that wasn't Christopher's nature. He was also dead on. "It's just a theory for me in a roundabout way. I can't prove any of it beyond a reasonable doubt and I know that is the world that you live and work in."

Christopher smiled and it gave her a warm feeling that only the booze usually provided. "You've been on target with everything that's happened so far. Let's hear what you've got."

"I don't have to remind you about the Atlanta Child Murders."

"No," She heard him suck in a breath. "But I'm sure you're going to remind me anyway."

Angel raised her long index finger with a manicured nail at the end of it. "I'm only stressing the point about the yellow rose. The roses and the symbolism as you named it a few minutes ago."

"Alright, Doc," Christopher said patiently. "I was a little occupied at the time, but the city adopted a policy of raising a yellow rose, one for each of the missing victims...that included me."

Angel shook her head and it surprised Christopher. "That's not the whole of it, Christopher. The yellow rose evolved into a symbol of hope for a city that desperately needed it at the time."

"Yea, alright, Doc, but hope against _what_ exactly? We now know, all these years later, that there was more than one kidnapper and more than one motive going on at once. We still aren't sure who followed whom."

Angel acknowledged Christopher's accurate assessment with a curt nod. Louis Keaton told her himself that the Caretaker and a very early rendition of Pandora had recruited him to kidnap and molest Black boys with the intent to incite a race war in the city that would likely spill over into the entire South, and perhaps the total country.

Simultaneous abductions were being perpetrated by Muhammad Clark. He was a troubled young man who was sexually assaulting, just as troubled older teens and young men, and was tried and convicted of killing scores of them and throwing their dead bodies in the Chattahoochee River. Clark was now on the fringes of old age and was still serving time in the Georgia Prison System.

But Angel knew that her theories and innuendoes could wait. Five minutes and twenty feet later, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree and Special Agent Christopher Prince found out how odd this investigation was going to get.

Agent Willie Collier:

He was a dark haired man who looked to be around 35 years old. He looked as if he'd recently dropped a significant amount of weight and his skin had yet to adjust to his body's new configuration.

A helicopter had taken to the sky. It was close enough for its blades reverberation to be an annoyance, but still far enough away not to disturb her hair. A new truck from the local CBS affiliate had pulled up behind where they had parked earlier. More APD police cars were arriving on the scene and Angel surmised that it was no coincidence that they got here right after the media did. There were going to be a lot of spectators here. Tensions were already high. An increased attendance by the APD may be needed to help curb the tide. Or their presence may make matters worse thanks to the results of Deliverance.

What Angel knew for a near certainty was whatever they found here was going to nearly impossible to hide from the public.

"What in the hell is this?" Christopher asked when he reached ground zero. "Is this some kind of prank?"

Agent Collier held up his hands defensively. "We haven't disturbed a thing, Agent Prince. This is exactly how the two civilians who called this in to that camerawoman at the news station found it."

It was the damned oddest thing that Angel had seen in all the times that she had consulted with the bureau in the past. And she had seen a hell of a lot.

For the lack of a better description, someone, Angel could only guess a single person, had wedged a black doll into the concrete hole in the floor of this particular structure. They'd even taken the painstaking time and effort to place the doll partially inside of it without crushing the toy. They also had troubled themselves into clothing the thing to protect it against the dirt that would strike it because of today's smoky strong winds. Angel pulled at the cuffs of her trousers and then kneeled to get a closer look.

"It's no joke, Christopher," She said. It is more of an illusion though. "Take a closer look at this."

Christopher assumed a Johnny Bench pose of his very own to catch a better glimpse at what she'd detected. He saw it right away too. There were cut marks around the doll's throat and the head had been squeezed so much that the plastic had refused to pop back out into its normal given shape.

"Did you see this, Doc?"

That same someone had presumably left a full sized bullet inside the dolls head. That wasn't all however. A full size rope was tied, without much success, around the doll's tiny legs. Christopher stopped his examination long enough to look at her probably to gage if they were thinking along the same lines or not, which would save a lot of time.

"It's nearly identical to the _real_ early crime scenes the APD found in the fall of 1979," Christopher made his voice of whisper. "This was some of the heavy evidence that the State used in its prosecution of Muhammad Clark."

Agent Collier had heard Christopher after all. "The State...Muhammad Clark, what are you talking about?"

Angel used the explanation to Agent Collier as a tool to refresh herself on what she had studied some years earlier. "The corpse of the 16 year old boy was badly decomposed, but the Medical Examiner was still able to recognize that he had been strangled to death and then shot post mortem."

"Look here," Christopher had rubbed his thumb over the forehead and hair of the doll. "I believe this model hit the retail market about eight to ten years ago."

"I think you're right, Prince." Agent Collier smiled with a pleasant recollection. "My boy must have been about four or five at the time. He carried that thing around with him everywhere. 'Action Traction' is what I thought the store people called it. I finally had to hide the thing to wean him off of it. He must have cried for days afterwards." His smile soured. "Respectfully, sir, what is the significance of what model the doll is to all of this?"

"The significance," Angel found herself saying evenly. "Is that these dolls went out of circulation two or more years ago. Am I right, Christopher?"

He nodded. "Yea...that means whoever did this has been holding on to this thing for a time or they troubled their selves with E-Bay or some other web site to order it specifically. You don't find black male dolls everywhere. They wanted this scene to be a nearly flawless rendition of the real thing. They wouldn't accept anything less than perfection."

The chatter in the background had increased two fold in the background.

"It's a Goddamn conspiracy." One voice proclaimed.

"Hell yea," A woman's voice added her two cents worth. "We've seen the FBI's handiwork already."

"What do you visualize when you see our people's future?" A third voice asked

"I see a future filled with sadness and pain." A group of people answered in return.

Angel spoke to the two men over the crowds whooping and hollering. "I remember reading that the authorities who first found that young man's corpse they thought that it was a horrible murder, but an isolated case. The prominent media attention, at least what passed as media attention in those days, really didn't jump on board until a couple years later when—"Angel found her friends gaze. She honestly didn't know who or how many agents within the bureau knew about Christopher's abduction by Louis Keaton in the other half of this story. "They really didn't hop on board until Keaton's victims were taken."

Christopher nodded curtly in Angel's choice of discretion. He got back to his feet and brushed the dirt off of his trousers. "Do you think this is an isolated event, Doc, or do you believe that there will be more 'scenes' like this one to be discovered."

Angel shrugged. "I guess the _first_ order of business is to find out what it truly represents. Our answer lies in there somewhere—"

Angel was interrupted when the cries of the dissenting voices grew louder. It took a full unit of uniformed officers to move in to quiet the building ruckus. Two of the cops pulled out their batons and pushed their way on the other side of the dividing tape.

A young woman who Chris believed had been beautiful once, but the stress of adulthood had been most unkind to her face screamed at him. She was wearing the colors of a Peacekeeper. "You need to pick your side, brother. Either you are with us...or you're with _them_. The Rooster if foul, the Rooster is no damned good."

Christopher had seen and heard enough. "Sargent, get those people back right now. We cannot allow this crime scene to be contaminated."

Angel watched as a mini melee occurred right before her big brown eyes. She couldn't testify exactly who pushed whom and who punched the other first. But three uniformed APD officers had toppled five citizens and were striking them with their batons.

But the men lying on their backs weren't going to have the APD have the last say in the manner. They punched at the officers. They scratched at their eye sockets. The largest of the cops was bitten on the shoulder hard enough to draw blood.

Christopher had lowered into a sprinters stance to intervene when the advantage shifted over to the crowd, but Angel caught him, planted her feet in the dirt, and used all of her strength to hold on to her friend to keep him from diving into the fray. "Don't involve yourself in this, Christopher. It will stabilize itself." Angel spoke loudly so he would hear her and suddenly she was right. "Look for yourself,"

And it had. At least for the time being, cooler heads had prevailed, along with the arrival of a new squadron of officers making their way around the curve from their cars.

"It's all falling apart," Angel said. "This situation is on the verge of exploding into something none of us may be able to pull back from."

Christopher snatched his arm away from her and straightened his shirt and jacket. Angel hadn't realized she still had him in her grasp. "And you seem to always be in tuned with those fools in Pandora's thought processes. Where should we look for clues next, Doctor?"

"Like I said, Christopher, I have theories, nothing more." Angel felt suddenly as if she had taken a defensive stance. "Most of what I feel is based on intuition. I worked with Pandora for a very short time. After you are around Serena for a while you can't help but understand some of her thought processes. She's a complicated woman for sure, but she's not impossible to read."

A new voice called up from somewhere behind them. "That's why Sheridan doesn't completely trust you, Doctor, and either should you, Agent Prince." Tabitha Blue said as a means of announcing her arrival.

Angel held her ground. "I'm not keeping anything from you that I'm conscious of, Christopher. I wouldn't lie to you."

Christopher rubbed his jaw and looked as if he couldn't make up his mind about anything at that moment. He caught his breath, introduced Collier to his partner and caught her up on the few things they had learned and theorized from this crime scene.

Blue said: "So this is the escalation—the Rapture that Serena Tennyson kept hinting at. I'm not impressed."

"You shouldn't be impressed, Agent Blue." Angel crossed her arms. "But don't be a fool either. This is just the beginning. Of this I have no doubt."

"What in the hell is that supposed to mean?" Blue asked her.

Chris had returned to a state of calm. "It means that the doctor believes that this doll is a representation of a child that has already or will be soon abducted off of the streets of Atlanta. I know Louis Keaton. He is a serial pedophile. And we will have more serial dancing to do to catch him." He finally said. "That child will be left alive as long as Keaton doesn't feel threatened in anyway."

Angel nodded at her friend's input but reserved her statements for the agents Collier and Blue. "And if I had to guess, I would say that he will be abducting at least a half a dozen children or more to join this boy soon."

Christopher's business cell rang.

"Agent Prince," He said into the receiver.

After listening to the party on the other end he sighed long and deep. _There is more_ _trouble_ , Angel thought. _What could have possibly gone wrong now_? "Yea, thanks, Ricky. I'm glad you called me first."

Blue shifted in her stance, impatient for the news. "What now, Chris? Did someone find another doll? Or is it worse did someone find a real body?"

"Hundreds of bodies have been found." Christopher slapped at the 'off' button feature of his smart phone. He may it his business to lookout at the crowd, chanting and singing, but relatively peaceful for the time being. "We keep asking if things could possibly get worse in this city, well it has expeditiously."

"What is it, Christopher?" Angel felt the need for her first drink of the new day. "What has happened?"

"The House in Chains has sent the Peacekeepers to infiltrate the Carver Street Housing Project." He looked to the heavens and then down below. "There are hundreds of casualties."
Roxanne

**Carver Street Apartments, Atlanta, 11** th **Day**

She jerked out a dreamless sleep, disoriented, sweating, and pissed off that strangers saw her in a state like this.

And a little hungry, whatever was cooking in the kitchen had either a wondrous smell to it or she had indeed been starving to death.

Joseph Champion flipped some eggs from one side of the frying pan to another. He waited until she gave him a visual conformation to approach where she had been lying on the couch—

Wait. Something's wrong here.

There had been no couch...no kitchenette...and little else where they were before.

Champion must have read her mind, handed her a biscuit as a peace offering and said, "No Roxanne, we're not in the same apartment before your lights went out." She took the biscuit. "I got some bacon in the stove as well. It will all be ready in a minute, but I'm sure you want some answers."

"I do."

He stepped back over to the stove, as his eggs were on the fringes of burning. "First of all, I should say good morning to you."

She glanced up and quickly out of the window and then sat back on the couch and tried to get her thoughts together. _Have I been out all of that time?_

"To answer the first of your many questions—this is Andre's place, the _real_ one that he didn't want either of us in. With the Choir Boy threat...neutralized...he no longer felt threatened by having other residents seeing you or me come out of here."

And Roxanne believed it.

It had his style or lack thereof. There were pictures of his mom who Roxanne had remembered meeting or more than one occasion when she had to come down to the middle school for parent-teacher conferences. She had grayed considerably but it was her. A life sized pinup of Beyoncé graced one wall, while a Nicki Manji featuring her fake breast in a tight shirt stared at them from another.

"I'm sorry I didn't wake you...you were sleeping so peacefully, well you were, at least at first." He handed her a plate and a plastic cup with water in it. She reluctantly accepted it. "I wasn't sure how you would react to being awakened by a virtual stranger."

A new question rose to the surface of her brain.

"Where are my—"

Champion pointed to both her guns and the small amount of bullets she had remaining. She put the plate down on the table and gave each weapon a thorough examination until she was positive they hadn't been tampered with.

"Where is Andre?" She asked

"He's around the complex someplace." Champion said between three forkfuls of eggs. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Are you alright, Roxanne? What, if anything, do you remember from last night?"

She flashed him a fake smile. "I'm fine...and not much actually."

She leaned against the window trying to get it together, trying to gather her thoughts into something...anything nearing cohesion. Something was poking her in her pants pocket when she leaned on the wall.

She pulled a locket from inside of her pants.

She opened it and saw the face of two darling little girls.

And it _all_ came back in a rush.

She'd charged around the corner in the apartment with her gun a blazing hitting The Admiral of the Peacekeepers with a shot to his upper chest before his forearm could get in her line for a kill shot to his head. He was close enough to dive on top of her. The landing took her breath away and any advantage she had previously gained.

Champion had stayed back using the bedroom door as a shield and fired hitting one...and then a second...and even a third Peacekeeper who tried to reach them through the narrow doorway. Andre had fired shots all over the place, his accuracy made worse by the punk trying to hold his pistol sideways like a gangster that he would never be.

Roxanne had struggled to breathe. The Scarred Man had bashed her head against the tile with one of his scarred forearms and kept her gun wielding hand at bay with his other.

Roxanne did use his strength against the man though. She used him to aid in her aiming the gun and she squeezed off two rounds killing a couple more Peacekeepers coming through the threshold as Champion had done minutes ago.

She remembered hearing Champion announce that he was out of ammo when he took an apparent stinger to his shoulder blade. Andre had wasted his bullets...and his time and was now involved in a hand to hand duel with... by her curves, what looked like a female Peacekeeper. Roxanne knew, female or not, training or not, Andre's slight frame and fragile psyche wouldn't hold up long in a fight.

Roxanne had used The Scarred man's weight against him again and managed to slip a knee...and then the opposite knee into his groin. It was far from a perfect maneuver, but a man's jewels were a man's jewels. _Impressive,_ Senorita, she recalled hearing Victor's throaty acknowledgment. _Now impress the hell out of me and finish him._

Roxanne had regained full control of her pistol but was unsure whether she had any shots left. The Scarred Man was vulnerable, but the clock for her to keep this small advantage counted down with each passing second.

So instead of shooting him, she used the pistol to bash his balls again.

The Scarred Man howled in pain as if he had a new scar in a tender spot to add to his two others. In that split second she could remember yelling, _we are not drug dealer_ s _or Choir Boys,_ _Admiral_. But he lunged at her one last time.

And Roxanne snatched the machete off of the floor and beheaded the man in one swoop of speed and power.

"You swung so hard that the hilt of the blade struck you in the forehead." She could feel the tender spot and wondered how bad it looked...ever a woman to concern one's self with aesthetics when her life had been on the line. "I don't think that was enough to knock you unconscious, but your head striking the tile probably was."

So Champion finished the tale for her. Andre had won his battle with the female Peacekeeper and had her blood dripping on a steak knife as proof. There was enough of an opening in the crosswalk and enough distraction of the Peacekeepers with the other battles being waged for them to make their escape.

"You weren't light, I'll tell you that." Champion demonstrated the fireman's carry that he used to carry her out and then eventually up the stairs to Dre's place. "You do have the cutest tattoo on your lower back—"

"Zip it, Champion," She cut him off. "I already hate the idea of thanking you as it is."

He smiled when he downed the last of his biscuit. The crumbs were entangled in his goatee. "But you still will thank me, won't you Roxanne?"

"Thank you," She said with as acidly as she could manage.

She finished her food, her pride taking a back seat there as well. After they both had finished she asked: "You didn't run away, Champion?" Her arched eyebrows raised in curiosity. "Why wouldn't you run away?"

"Run where, Roxanne. Just as I told you before the Peacekeepers rudely interrupted our conversation: I have no place to go. I'm the only one in this housing project who is somewhat sad to see the Bishop and his men go."

He beckoned her to sit on the couch with him so he wouldn't have to speak so loud. Thin walls still had thick ears or that was the excuse the man used to have her sit next to him _. I think_ _you flatter yourself to much, Roxanne_. She thought. She stank of perspiration, gunpowder, and other people's blood.

Champion continued by saying, "I also promised you that I would take you to Erica Lovings in exchange for my safe passage out of Carver. I intend to live up to my end of that agreement."

Roxanne stood back to her full height quickly. She didn't need this stranger who had admitted that he was a Pandora agent to think for a single minute that he was scoring points with her. She had yet to take the mark but she had no love for Pandora or their twisted ideologies. They had killed innocent people. They had killed innocent children. And they had tried to kill the man who was the closest thing to any man that she ever loved—

Andre Knight unlocked the door, entered, and struggled to steady his hand while he put a single lock on the front door. He stood with his back pinned to the door as if he were holding it up. He was sweating in his greasy hair and his arm pits. And he was breathing very hard.

"The cops...Five-0...their working their way back here. They are knocking on every door asking for witnesses and the like. They ain't taking no for an answer. We've got to get out of here now. I can't deal with the APD right now. I'm one or two phone calls from having to stay downtown with them by default."

Roxanne stepped towards Dre. There was more to this than just the police. She looked down at this hands which were both now shaking almost uncontrollably. She squeezed one and then the other.

"Dre, you've been arrested countless times. You know most of those uniformed officers by their first names. You don't want to go downtown because people who get into the foolishness that you do never want to go down there." She squeezed tighter and at least a small sea of calm washed over him. He wouldn't make eye contact with her though, so she used the tip of her index finger to turn his chin until his big eyes were in line with her dark ones. "You've never been afraid to go down there, Andre. What are you so frightened of this morning? What have you seen that has scared you this badly?"

Champion had put his plate down and stood, wanting to know as well.

"Roxanne, have either of you been outside?"

Roxanne remembered what those killing fields in Mexico looked like. She knew Andre had seen a drive by or two, she knew that he had run from a few more, but the human mind may not be able to process the blood and the killing on a massive scale that Peacekeepers and the Choir Boys exhibited just yesterday.

Champion's long legs began to inch him towards the window—

"No," Andre said with a calmness that now began to unnerve her. "The way my place is configured, the view of the outside world is blocked by the rooftops of the other apartments. For you to see what I've seen, you'll need to go out of the front door and then over to the top step."

"What are we looking for, pal?" Champion asked.

Andre looked away. "You'll know when you see it." His head spun about quickly and his voice took on an authoritative tone that she'd never heard before. "It's the only reason why the cops haven't gotten back here already. I'll meet you two at the bottom of the stairs."

Dre left the door open after he had left. Roxanne grabbed her guns, secured them out of sight, looked behind to make sure Champion was still there and walked out.

The smoky haze had lifted a little today and Roxanne took that as a good omen. She took the eight or ten strides that her legs provided for her and reached the top of the steps that Dre had mentioned to them—

And then she saw what had frightened Andre Knight so badly.

For as long as Roxanne could remember The Choir Boys and the many gangs before them had hung pairs of sneakers to the electric wires in a unnecessary...not to mention dangerous way to symbolize to all who walked or drove by that this was their territory. Roxanne had seen pairs of sneakers after pair of sneakers...after another pair of sneakers...

Now, for all the days she still had to live, Roxanne Sanchez would remember this morning and that all the many pairs of sneakers had been taken down...and new symbols of ownership and territory had taken their place.

She saw the severed heads of the gang members hanging from the electrical lines. She saw one head after the other...after the other...until these heads were stretched from one end of the project to the other.

_A penance is set_ was scrawled on their foreheads.

Champion lost the breakfast that he'd taken the time and effort to fix. Roxanne could feel her mouth widen into it was a classic O.

In the twenty minutes it took the two of them to gather themselves and reach the asphalt level and catch up to Dre. Roxanne's throat was still dry as she said to Champion: "How far is she?"

Champion stood on his toes and peered over to what Roxanne could only guess was due north. The bureau's training program had always taught her to be aware of her surroundings and have an out navigated ahead of the time. Victor had agreed with the first part, but demanded two potential outs in case something sealed one of them off from her. But neither of those parties has to push their way out of a housing project where every building and street looks the same.

And Roxanne doubted that either had the fresh carnage of urban warfare on an American street embedded in their conscious mind either while they were trying to get out of dodge either.

"Around the next column of buildings," Champion increased his pace. "I think it is at least?"

"You _think_?"

"Forgive me, Roxanne," Champion sounded irate. "I've only been down this far in this place a couple of times."

Andre added his thoughts: "If he's heading where I think he is, we're looking at 15 minute walk."

_And where is that, Dre_ , a sense of dread fluttering over her again. There was a very important question that every Professional Investigator should ask a potential witness in a missing person's case. And she had not asked Joseph Champion. "Then it should be ten minutes if we hurry. Let's go, gentlemen."

Half way across the courtyard they slowed then stopped for a breather. At least they were beyond the view of most of the severed heads. Roxanne knew that the images that were burned into her head would give her nightmares that would rival the epic final moments of her confrontation at Vargas estate, and the fact that she had her gun trained on two innocent girls who had no means to defend themselves.

"Champion, I want to ask you something about last night?" She was winded but not nearly to the level of the two men who had accompanied her. "You didn't really answer my question to how you ended up in a place like this." Roxanne said, shielding her eyes from bright sunlight that fought through the haze. "You had to have made a previous contact to even dare coming here at all, someone you really trusted."

"Yea, I did. Anyway, Roxanne, it's a long story—"

Roxanne grabbed his wrist when the man tried to move forward. Dre looked aggravated by yet another delay, but had learned by now not to tempt fate by running off at the mouth in Roxanne's wake. "I'm not going anywhere else with you until I at least hear some of this tale. I've gotten this far and this close to finding Erica. I've got a resounding fear that she's not going anywhere."

"You know this tough girl act grows old real fast you know." All of the muscles in Champions face seemed to frown. "Don't act like that shit with those severed heads didn't bother you because I saw the look in your eye. And I also saw the fear on your face when the Peacekeepers were bashing through the door of that first apartment."

Roxanne told him to save his psychological crap of evaluations for someone who actually gave a shit. And then placed her hand on her Nine and said: "Answer my question, Champion, or you are your own. You know what Pandora is capable of. You've seen what a House in Chains will do. And you have the FBI about 200 yards behind us as well." Roxanne's laugh was brief and hard sounding. "Let's see how long you last out there on your own."

Champion sighed. "Like I said it's a long story. Years ago, I did some Intel for a gang task force on activity in this region. Of course, some of Atlanta's gangs like the Black Knights, The Legion of Doom and The Choir Boys came up in my database. Believe it or not I was damned good at my job. I've help put away some high profile drug pushers from here to Texas, Illinois, California, all over the freaking country."

"That's a good start, Champion." Roxanne countered. Obviously something went wrong. What was it?"

"I was born and raised in Houston." Champion sighed again. "I collared what turned out to be a low life looser in that part of the state...or so I thought at first. He turned out to be the state's prized witness against his former employers. My superiors and the District Attorney never seemed to agree on a hell of a lot, but they did come to the conclusion that this gentleman's testimony was far more important to the tax payers of the State of Texas than a long term sentence for the gentleman himself."

Roxanne nodded, wanting him to get on with the story. "They pleaded him out."

"Yea,"

"Our Justice System can suck when it wants to, Champion." And you and I can attest to it can't we, dear sister. "Unfortunately, in high profile investigations these things happen—"

"Don't tell me they just happen," Joseph Champion pointed a finger of discontent at her. _You are alive after all, Champion_. "My new best friend had been freed. And he wasn't quite in the mood just to be thankful that for not serving hard time." Champion got close to her...real close. "He abducted, tortured and killed my wife four weeks later."

"I'm sorry." Was all Roxanne could say to a man that she had learned had an odd...kinship in their long journey to the end of this courtyard.

"He hacked at her face...her neck and breast...everywhere."

"I'm sorry." Roxanne said again. "Now connect the dots for me of how you ended up here in Carver."

Andre stopped their conversation long enough to remind them about the time, the cops, so Roxanne started walking again and Champion took his strides next to her.

"I guess it was good timing or a blessing I guess."

"How do you mean?"

Champion pointed to the left. He told her Erica was right around the bend. "On my last case with the task force, a Black man who testified against one of these gang bangers was killed when the case resulted in a mistrial. Let's say his wife and I developed a totally plutonic kinship drenched in the blood of our dead spouses. She told me if I ever needed her she was a phone call away. Hard times hit her with her husband's death with little insurance and then the Great Recession stripped her of a job she'd worked for 20 years. So she ended up here...in this God forsaken place."

"Okay, Champion, let's say that I believe half—"

"I don't give a damn whether you believe me or not, Roxanne. What I am telling you line for line is the truth."

Roxanne Sanchez honestly hadn't made up her mind yet and told him so. He could put that in his pipe and smoke it for all she cared. "I'm interested in fast forwarding a bit. Alright, you felt betrayed by our legal system, check. You many have been driven into the waiting arms of Pandora because a man of color tortured and killed your wife, check. Now you are here...and the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that wins us the prize is what you did to become so unpopular with Pandora. How did you piss Serena Tennyson off?"

"She started me off in surveillance, a little intelligence, cyber technology, and any other grunt work she could find me. I was desperate. I was angry. I was eager to serve...so long as it didn't include murdering anyone." He said. "I wasn't Danielle Rohm or any of the other shooters. I wasn't Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree who was working with that nut Louis Keaton—"

The doctor's name drew Roxanne's attention and ire. "You know the doctor?"

Champion said that he did, that he'd met the good doctor on a couple of occasions. "I was certainly angry that the system cost me my wife, but not upset with the people who still served her. I refused to cross that line into corruption and murder of government employees."

Roxanne thought about his monologue for a few moments and voiced her won conclusion.

"But it wasn't enough to satisfy your boss was it, Champion?" Roxanne asked him. "Tell me, who did you refuse to kill?"

"Serena's was consumed with the Circle...and Xavier Prince in particular. He's a cool customer. If I could use one word to describe that little man then _cool_ summarizes him pretty well."

"So she asked you to kill Xavier Prince for her?"

Champion shook his head her, sad that she didn't see as he had laid it out for her. "There have been times in the past that Serena has thought the best way to knock Xavier Prince off his block...is to kill his older brother Christopher."

Roxanne had whipped out her Nine and bashed Champion across his temple with it with ridiculous speed. Andre saw what happened out of the corner of his eye, but Roxanne's hard-edged glare backed him down.

"She wanted you to kill Christopher Prince, huh?" She stood over him. Champion was bleeding from the spot where she had hit him, but he would live...a little while longer. "And we all know that his step daughter's ended up missing, and you seemingly the only one on the planet who knows where she is just one fat coincidence right?"

Champion felt for blood.

"Yea, Roxanne, it is just that, one fat coincidence as you say." Champion got back to his feet and resumed his walk. "Erica made some powerful enemies in here. It's like this place has its own social networking going on. She showed the ultimate disrespect to an individual or individuals who had the means and the will to do something about it. I've been in the business long enough to understand that these neighborhoods administer their own brand of justice. And Xavier sent his 'gang' and administered his too didn't he? Anyway, I want to keep our agreement, Roxanne. I need it. Carver has gone civilized on me. That is wonderful for the good folks who suffered here. It is very bad for me. I need you to take me with you while I figure what my next move is."

Roxanne stood in the bright sunshine, the heat making the smell from a nearby dumpster smell even worse than it normally would.

"Why should I do that, Champion?" She said evenly. "Why should I believe any of this?"

"Because I've done as I said that I would." Joseph Champion pointed at the smelly dumpster without looking at it. "She's in there. Erica's remains are in this dumpster."

Roxanne stared at the body of Erica Lovings for a long time after Champion and Andre unlatched the side opening of the dumpster so that she could walk inside instead of climbing over the top of it.

Erica Lovings:

She had been a petite, light skinned young woman who anyone would have proclaimed as a 'cutie' if not all of the earring holes in her ears and forehead, all of her tattoos that covered both arms and ran up the side of her neck. Her last day on earth she had been dressed in overalls that would have fit a man twice her side and steel toe shoes. Her hair was cropped low. Roxanne was sure that she'd been mistaken for a very small man when people approached her from behind.

Roxanne went for her cell to call 911—

She heard a woman...or perhaps a male child scream from an area that they had just left behind.

Andre... _when did he leave us_...was holding one of the Choir Boys...a true _boy_ who Dre' seemed to know by name and had probably been a scout before the Peacekeepers had marched on Carver and shown him and his brethren the error of their ways.

Andre smiled at and talked with the bleeding boy as he found the strength to carry the child who probably weighed as much as he did. Dre sat him down as gently as he can as to not rock the boy who has death written all over his face. It is the same look your face has just relinquished, Erica.

The boy died in Andre's arms and to her old school mate's credit, he honored the boy by siting him on the ground as gently as he had sat him in his lap and closed his eyelids for him.

_Oh my, God, will this ever end_.

The boy had not traveled this lonely road towards death alone. Another child was walking aimlessly...a staggered step to his left...three wobbly strides to the right...

His left arm was missing from the elbow down and he had a river of blood pouring from his nose and both his eyes

And he was carrying a pistol in his other hand.

Andre cried out in a voice that didn't sound a human. Champion had semi blanked out, as if the only way he will survive this day is for his mind to exist far away from the city of Atlanta...far away from the Carver Housing Projects. Roxanne wished she could have joined Champion in that place. She wished it with every fiber of her being.

The boy fell suddenly... on his own gun.

And there was a shot fired.

Andre Knight no longer attempted to hide his pain or his grief. And he released both in cry that may have been powerful enough to wake the dead, including Erica. He crawled on his knees towards where the second boy met his end...but either wielded the strength in his knees, or the will to press on had forsaken him forever.

Roxanne gently put Erica's head down, she put _all_ of her burdens down and ran out of the dumpster and carried Councilwoman's prophetic words with her by the time she reached Andre. _If you want to see me suffer, come now Victor, come now._

_Carver is going to experience a tragedy unlike any ever seen before_. The wig wearing woman had said. And Roxanne had remembered the woman's fat face brighten with sudden mix of pride and wonder. _While at the same time Carver is going to experience a rebirth that will be_ _glorious and long overdue._ And Roxanne had yet to still decipher if the hysterical fit that had taken hold of Vanessa Davis had been a bout of laughter or crying. _Carver is going to experience a purging that none of us shall ever forget._

Andre Knight had cried for a long time on the asphalt floor of Carver's Housing Projects.

Roxanne Sanchez wrapped her arm around the waist of her old classmate, held him close...and cried with him.
Chapter Nine

Goddamn.

I must say, Chief that was my first reaction when I saw it as well.

Don't bullshit me. Don't bullshit me, not on something like this. Are you prepared to bet your professional reputation and mine that this information is absolute and accurate?

Darling, I'm so sure that I would bet my life on it.

-Phone conversation between the Editor in Chief of the Georgia Times Union Bernard Lott and Head Staff Writer Lucy Burgess.
Seth

**Denise Prince's condo, 11** th **Day**

After an initial hesitation, he had accepted Denise Prince's invitation of dinner, coffee and company at the comforts of her apartment.

Sitting in the soft leather chair, Dr. Seth Dupree hesitated again...and once again deciding that a second cup of coffee after a wondrous meal would justify a lengthy drive back to his hotel by the airport if little else. Originally, he had told her that he shouldn't, that the hour was growing late, and he should be turning in to his hotel that was costing him a pretty penny.

She smiled but said that she wasn't hearing that. She said they had been working hard for the last couple of days and deserved the chance to relax and let their hair down.

Now he was transferring the warmth of his cup to his lips, down his throat, in little swallows. _Well, look at here;_ he had drained the cup to the bottom again. He uncrossed his legs and sat up as straight the love seat would let him. It was time for him to leave. It was time for him to _go_ —

He heard the emergency vehicle speed by at the same time Denise did. By instinct he looked up at her as she cracked the blind to peer out ten floors down. He saw some of the life drain out of her hazel eyes and her mouth quivered. Erica Lovings, Denise's adult child was missing. It had been one of the talks of the triage center since he'd arrived there. It wasn't the only item, but the gossip about Erica was leading the pack of news items by a nose.

When she found his gaze again, he saw her need for human companionship rise to a new level, almost a palpable hunger. He didn't need his wife's background in Psychology or Sociology to understand that. He allowed himself to sit back until he found that comfortable spot in the chair again.

They had found a professional chemistry almost from their first shift working together. Seth had participated on these specialized emergency responses and trauma teams most of the second half of his career so far. He though that the cooperation of some of the state's finest medical personnel was not only a good idea, but a necessity after the 911 attacks all of those years earlier. And then centering the state's efforts in and around the capital in Atlanta made even more sense. The city was the home for the country's defense against infectious diseases and likely was the lone target for any foreign terrorist plot they may have involved biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons.

Still, no one including Seth could have expected to see what they'd seen happen over the last few days.

A doctor named Greenwood, who had the smell of salami and Italian bread flowing from his pores, had teamed Seth with the head RN over this particular unit which happened to be Denise Prince. She was an excellent nurse, yet, Seth found himself even more impressed with her leadership and organizational skills. _And we needed every bit that you could offer._ There were the burn victims that were flown in from The Andrew Young Youth Center bombing and the law enforcement personnel that ran over the mines when Serena Tennyson had been apprehended.

Seth had foolishly allowed himself to believe that the hostilities had ended when she was taken downtown. _I can finally get on to my business of finding Angel, and trying to rebuild our_ _life together_. The Gray man had remembered saying then. He couldn't have been more wrong.

He'd done countless surgeries in the days treating those gunshot wounds. Most of these victims came from the Fox Theatre after the siege there was ended by the FBI and then another round of cops were brought in when Serena made her daring escape during transport out of Atlanta...if the news people could be believed.

And then the impossible happened.

It got worse.

A House of Chains had sent... _what they were called_...the Peacekeepers into the Carver Housing Projects to attack some area drug dealers. Hundreds of mostly wounded young people were brought to the trauma center where most never left—at least not alive; _and my God, what was the cutting off of the heads about._

Three of his nurses had to be relieved of duty when the first torso's arrived without their owners head. Medical people are trained to see and likewise treat anything.

They had no idea they were operating in the middle of a war zone.

He looked at his cell phone...there were no calls or messages from Angel again today.

But there was _one_ call that he had made. He had almost made it from his home back in Macon but didn't. But he had finally called her after all these years.

She had picked up the line after the house phone had ringed five or six times.

Hello. Hello, is anyone there?

He had only let her hear his breathing.

_It's_ you _isn't it._ _I thought that we agreed that you wouldn't call me again, Seth._

He had finally responded, his breath still heavy in his throat. _I'm sorry. I know he'll hurt you if he catches you on the phone—_

_No, Seth, He'll_ kill me _if he catches me on the phone. Look...listen...I'm going to say this to you again, Seth, and then I'm going to hang up ok?_

_What?_ He had wanted to know.

_It's not your fault, Seth. You have to let it go. It's not your_ —

And then he heard what sounded like a door that banged against its hinges. He heard a roar of disapproval from the man who had entered the room.

And then he had heard her scream before the line went dead.

It's not your fault, Seth. You have to let it go.

But she was so wrong...so wrong indeed.

Seth had called the four of them up even after his parents had warned him not too. They didn't mind him having his friends over to the seaside house, but no drinking, no drugs, and definitely no boating was going to be permitted over the weekend while they were out of the country.

By legal standing, he was 19 years old then, an adult, but he still lived under their roof, at least part of the time when he was home from Durham and Duke University. _And where were_ _you guys off to that time anyway_? He knew his mom's inheritance and his dad's businesses and investments netted them an allotment of about two or three grand trips a year from their home in Savannah to the more exotic ports of London, Paris and Rome.

But they weren't going to tolerate any nonsense from him, especially his love of boating, not with a late season storm brewing in from the Atlantic. Savannah was well in sight for nor'easter like conditions and some beach erosion only if they were lucky.

Seth had even had the audacity to pitch a fit and argue at the old man, even after the poor grades he'd posted his first full year off at school. He had to really buckle down the last six weeks of the semester to pass and advance or he could have kissed his academic scholarship goodbye.

Well, the entire first year at Duke wasn't a total failure.

And when Pam Toliver, Antoinette Burner, Clint Sessions and Sam Casey arrived on his parent's front porch, especially with their boating gear in hand, he knew they were in for a very special weekend, one he didn't plan on forgetting.

The storm rolled in on top of them about four hours later. The weather man had predicted the system would wash up further south nearer to St Simons Island close to the Florida border. When Seth had heard the report, he made an executive decision that the seas would we calm enough for them to sail, especially if they left now. He remembered the wind tossing a twisting the 20 footer and for a brief time Seth wondered if the boat would be cut in half by the gust. In the never ending cloud bank above them he imagined the dark clouds being his father's frowning face and the rain being his mother's tears for her only child.

Antoinette went overboard somewhere in their fifth hour out to sea. The others called for her and looked over the side, Clint nearly spilling over in the Atlantic trying to find his friend. But Sam had great eyes and spotted her not too far out from the boat.

Seth didn't hesitate. He dove in and reached her in a short time. And with the help of his other three friends, the finest people he'd ever known, they got her hauled back into the boat. They pulled Seth back in immediately thereafter.

Antoinette's skin was clammy and she wasn't breathing. Seth looked to his friends for answers. They looked to him for the same. No one knew CPR although Seth had taken some classes...that he had missed some days...and didn't pay attention in others, when he had secured his boating license.

They tried to make it up as they went along...these four soon to be law students trying to emulate a medical procedure, but Antoinette wasn't playing the role of a cooperative practice dummy very well...and died soon after.

"You didn't answer my question, Doctor?" Denise Prince was asking him something here in the present. How long had he been out of it? _You've been gone long enough for her to slip out_ _of her work clothes and into a pink housecoat with a neat bow tied her waist_. Seth noted that she'd showered, as her light skin had that same clammy appearance that Antoinette's did before she... _before you killed her, you moron_.

The aroma of meatloaf still hovered in the room. He retreated to the relative safety of food conversation. "The meatloaf and everything else was excellent, thank you, Denise." He raised his empty coffee cup towards where she was standing. "My compliments to the chef," And it was a true compliment at that. Angel cooked meals on a semiannual basis back home.

"You should eat in more," Denise said to him with a smile on her face. Her teeth were perfectly straight and white.

The first night together they had ordered pizza. The 12 and 16 hour days had taken their toll on him. Seth wasn't much on fast food, even when he had been that foolish age when the boating accident happened. So the prospect of yet another meal of burger and fries was massively unappealing to him. Last night she had offered to grill him some chicken breast on one of those name branded grills. Tonight, it had been classic meatloaf and mashed potatoes. _But I_ _can tell by your slim enough waist line that it's not about the food, it's about the company...or the lack thereof._

She had been an engaging and thoughtful host. He was being selfish. What harm could come from listening to her. The woman's only child still hadn't been found.

"If you need to talk," He touched his ears to signal to her that he was listening.

Denise sat in the chair across from him and put one leg underneath the other. He tried not to look at the gap that had wedged between her legs. "I guess I probably should, shouldn't I?" She lifted one of the pictures of Erica off of the coffee table and stroked it with two fingers with affection. "I don't quite know what I should or can say. I'm not sure where to begin?"

"I understand." Seth sat next to her to break any further barriers that may have been blocking her from expressing what she felt. Two things happened that disturbed him: He got a clear look at Erica thanks to the LED lighting flowing from the kitchen... _my God; I would say_ _that that was a young man if I didn't know better_. The second thing got his heart pumping more blood. He got a whiff of her baby oil, and he would have sworn that she smelled even better than Angel did after her showers. _Cool it, Seth_ , the Gray man scolded himself. _You just miss your_ _wife is all_...but Denise was a beautiful woman as well.

"Tonight must have been especially difficult. I know it was for me. Even with all of our training, we're human first, and I don't think anything can prepare you for what we saw coming through into the triage center. My God, all of those young people, all of their lives thrown away like yesterday's garbage."

Denise nodded slowly. "During the 411 attacks, I kept waiting for my ex-husband to be wheeled in. I thought because of his profession, because of his bloodlines, I just knew that he'd been injured...or worse."

Seth locked his fingers with hers. It was an instant reaction and an unplanned one. "The important thing is that he survived. He is a survivor." And now Dr. Seth Dupree truly knew he was lost...at least in knowing what he wanted to happen to Agent Chris Prince.

He had to admit that a wave of disappointment washed over him when Denise told him the news that her ex-husband had indeed escaped the Fox Theatre alive and mostly unharmed. He'd come to Atlanta hell bent on what...seeing the man suffer for his profession pulling his wife away from him. _Was I that simpleminded_? _Didn't I learn anything from the boating accident all of those years ago?_

And for a time, albeit a brief one, he even thought about trying to hurt Agent Prince himself. Now I don't know what to do about any of this?

"And then today," Denise was saying. "Today, I thought it would be Erica brought in on a gurney. Doctor Dupree, I kept seeing her face on all of the bodies of those headless victims...all of them. Roxanne Sanchez, the private investigator I told you about, she told Chris and he told me that Eric's trail seemed to end at Carver Housing Projects."

"Again, the worse scenario didn't play out, Denise." Seth said, and squeezed her soft hand tighter. "And I think it's time that you start calling me Seth."

"Alright, I would like that...Seth."

"I want you to hold on to hope. I want you to take a leap of faith that everything is going to turn out okay."

"I do, Seth." She moved closer to him. "Sometimes hope and faith is all a mother has left to cling to during trying times like this one, especially when you are alone."

Seth looked away.

"What?" Denise asked him. She scooted her butt so that the rest of her body was on the edge of her chair and so that their knees now touched. "I see a question forming on your face, Seth. Ask me anything you might want to know. I don't mind?"

"Your ex-husband is one of the most qualified people in this state to be finding your daughter." Seth said with an edge, the Gray Man getting to his feet, circled the living room, and reserved a spot standing in front of her. "He shouldn't be relying on a stranger to lead this investigation. He should be out there pounding the streets looking for her. She's family."

Denise reached up and patted the knuckles of his balled up fist in reassurance. "He is, Doctor, in his own way. Chris is searching for her."

She warmed up his coffee over his moderate objections and both of them sat back down. Seth picked up Erica's picture and ran his fingers along the smooth wooden frame trying to push how the young woman looked to the back of his mind. Her sexual preferences were irrelevant to the fact that she was missing...or worse. "Angel told me a long time ago that you and Chris met when Erica was a little girl."

Denise cheeks flushed with the warmth of a pleasant memory. "Erica must have been two or three years old. Chris adored her. He took my little girl everywhere he went."

"Erica must have fallen in love with him about the same time you did?"

"No," All of that warmth in Denise's face washed away. She put her back to Seth and stood next to the fireplace. The symbolism was not lost on the Gray Man. "I wish to God that what you just said was the truth but I know that it wasn't. You see, Doctor—Seth, Erica resented Chris presence in our lives almost from the very beginning."

"She _resented_ him," Seth asked. "Why would Erica resent someone who, at least on the surface, made her life better?"

Denise peered over her shoulder just enough for Seth to see one of her hazel eyes. "Understand that up into that point of Erica's life, it had just been the two of us. We struggled financially. I was trying to finish getting my nursing degree, keep food on the table, and raise her alone. But in part, because of those struggles, we developed a very tight bond."

"So in her two year old mind, Chris intruded on that bond."

Denise whipped around, facing him. "In her eyes he severed it beyond repair."

Set sat his cup in the saucer and rubbed his face. "She eventually got used to the idea though? Things between Chris and Erica had to get better with the simple passing of time right?"

"Yea, maybe, for a short time, maybe it did." Denise shook her head in agreement. "I would say that for about four years things went pretty well.

"And then,"

"And then... _life_ happened, Seth. As Erica grew older she began to question me more and more about her biological father. You know how cruel children that age could be. Her classmates teased her about not having a _real_ daddy."

Seth swallowed any potential thought on that, but the look in his gray eyes must have betrayed him.

"Don't be embarrassed, Seth. You were probably going to say something along the lines that most black children don't have their fathers in their day to day lives, or that many Black children don't know who their father is."

"It's not my place to—"

"You may have even gone further and say that many fathers of Black children are in jail...despite what Xavier Prince and a House in Chains has been able to accomplish." She said with some anger and Seth noticed her eyes tearing up for the first time.

"Tell me about Erica's father. Are you two still on speaking terms?" Seth's mind was racing to find a positive point somewhere to end this conversation on. He hopped out of the chair and handed Erica his cell. "Does the man even know that she's missing? You should call him. Perhaps he could help in the search somehow—"

"I don't know who Erica's father is."

Denise's words struck Seth with a fierceness of finality that he hadn't expected. He felt himself slouch in his stance. This conversation wouldn't end on a positive note after all. "I'm sorry, Denise. I shouldn't have pride in your private affairs." _Shit_ , Seth thought. _That wasn't your greatest use of the English language either you moron._

Denise squeezed his wrist and then his hand, her touch wasn't unpleasant and yet he shrank from it all the same. "I was a wild child. It was the spring time back home in Knoxville. I had a spectacular shape that had been hidden under all those heavy coats and sweaters all winter." She laughed then, and Seth wondered how much humor was really in it. He found out quickly as her face became one with frowns. She tried to hide her shame and her tears and failed miserably with both. "It's my fault, Seth. All of this is my fault."

"Don't do this disservice to yourself, Denise." Seth used his free hand to pull her into his embrace. Her breast pushed through the housecoat onto his chest. "We all make mistakes when we are young." _You brought a life into the world, Denise, while I took one out._

He tried to apologize for her...for what, Seth Dupree was unsure and she wasn't hearing it anyway. She pulled her head back far enough for him to resume eye contact with him. "Did you and Angel ever want to have kids?"

Seth's smile held very little warmth to it. Despite the mistakes in his past, he always thought he would have made a good father. "We never seemed to get around to it."

Denise grinned at him "Maybe your wife knows what I do: Mother's love their children almost to a fault." She hesitated and added: "I know that we Black women do. Many of us raise our children alone with little or no help from their fathers. We're tired. We're discouraged most of the time. We're angry _all_ of the time. So we focus all of the love that we have inside of us onto them."

A tear chased another down her cheeks.

"Denise don't do this,"

She held him tighter, and he felt a stirring in his slacks. He could feel her warmth. All of the oxygen went out of the room,

She said: "We're so angry at the world for not loving our children the way we do: So, when it comes to our kid's faults and shortcomings, we refuse to see them. Even the ones they inherited from us."

"What are you talking about, Denise?" Seth got another full whiff of her baby oil and whatever she used in her hair. "What did Erica inherit from you?"

Denise pulled him to her with amazing strength and kissed him once softly on the lips. "She has my anger." She parted his lips with her tongue. "She has my aggression."

She must have felt his manhood and rubbed her body up against it. Dr. Seth Dupree had ventured to Atlanta with the goal of retrieving his wife and possibly hurting Chris Prince as a bonus. _Angel claims not to love you_... _she sleeps with other men, you know this, Seth. Why shouldn't he take this moment...and this woman for himself_?

Seth found that he was kissing her back, seeing her brown skin against his pale skin hardened him further. He had never experienced—

Finally, he pushed her back, using his height advantage, and her shoulders for leverage. Both marriages still had a chance to be reconciled. This was a...romantic interlude trying to introduce itself where it could only do harm. He won't hurt anyone's chances by not being able to take back what he and Denise may have been engaged in minutes from now.

"I've overstayed my welcome, Denise. I'm sorry."

Denise Prince spun him around, pinning him face forward against the wall. Her housecoat was unbuckled, how and when it got that way he could not say for certain. She caught the slightest glimpse of her clad in a beige bra and matching panties. "Don't be sorry, Seth. Stay as long as you like. Your room is already paid for and will be waiting on you when you return."

"I know that," Denise whirled him back around with the same precision as before. The housecoat was completely gone and her bra straps were falling from over her shoulders. "Denise, we really shouldn't do this."

"We should," She put his hands on her large breast, which felt magnificent absent the bulky housecoat. "Your hands, you have wondrous hands, Doctor, touch me all over."

"I'm a surgeon," He said unnecessarily, when she wasn't drowning him in kisses. "Steady hands are the key to being successful at my profession. They could mean the difference between life and death."

"You're right. They may make the difference tonight."

When she tried to reach for... _It,_ he halted her advance with his right hand. He tried to be both soothing but stern all at once. The memories still flashed in his brain of how quickly things spiraled out of control with Angel, especially during the few quite times he'd experienced since he'd been in Atlanta.

"Denise, I'm still a married man." He said. "Despite our difficulties, I want things to work out with Angel. For better or worse, I still love my wife."

"And I still love Christopher Prince." She backed away a half an inch with the admission. Something in her eyes told Seth that it was the first time since their dissolution that she'd told anyone this. Yet, it didn't stop her from using her free hand to break through his defenses...and squeeze him until it hurt...until it felt so _right_. "It doesn't stop me from having a woman's needs. Please...don't make me beg for it." Denise's tears began to flow again. "That's why I asked you to come over last night...so we could wait for Roxanne's call together."

"Huh? What are you talk—"

She kissed him again on the mouth...and worked her way around his neck and started whispering, barely coherently in his ear. "Is it too much to ask for a little pleasure from you, _sir_? It's been too long. My little girl may never come home again. A little pleasure that we take from time to time may be all that I have left if you won't come back to me for good."

"Denise...who are you talking to—"

She looked mesmerized. As if she was under the influence of hypnosis or something even stronger. "I still love you... _Chris_."

" _Denise_ ," He used some of his strength reserves to push her to a safe distance but luckily, not to the floor."

She lunged at him—and bit his lip.

He cried out in pain.

But it was her who was enraged as if she'd been attacked and not him.

" _Goddamn you_ ," She yelled almost in a masculine tone, and it took all of his remaining strength and determination to restrain her. " _Goddamn you, sir_. You're so fucking selfish. I'll ask you again, Chris, do I have to beg for it?"

And then she collapsed to her knees as if she had truly been slapped back into this time, this reality. Seth made himself out to be a statue. He truly wished he'd had his wife's expertise on case file like the woman who was kneeling before him.

He snatched a paper towel from the roll of out of the kitchen and dampened it with warm water. It stung when he wiped his bleeding lips, but he would heal in a day or so. _But will you_ _heal, Denise_? She needed far more than a warmed wet paper towel to heal all of her wounds.

She cried for a long time until she had finally cried out. She was still only dressed in the matching bra and panty so Seth picked up her robe off of the floor and covered her shoulders against the night's chill.

"You've been under a lot of stress, Denise." He spoke to the top of her head, his one hand on her shoulder. "Give yourself some time. I'll see you tomorrow if you show for work. If not, call me...we'll talk. I don't take any of this personally. I promise you that I'll help see you through this."

Denise looked up at Seth and he wiped the last of her tears away. When she stood he tightened the belt around her housecoat. "Take a leap of faith with me, Denise."

And then there was an urgent knocking on her front door.

Alarm graced her face, and the Gray Man was sure that he wore a similar look that matched his host.

"Denise...it's me, Chris." The voice on the far side of the door that belonged to Special Agent Christopher Prince said. "I have...I need to speak with you. I know I usually call first before I come over here. I need you...to...I need you to open up...please."

Denise stared at the door for an extended time before she finally said, "Just a minute, Chris. I'm just getting out of the shower...let me put something on."

She sprang into action—which included ushering Seth unceremoniously into her bedroom's walk in closet. "Seth... _Doctor_ , I need you to stay in here for a minute. Don't say a word."

Seth tried to make sense of all of this. One moment this woman is all over him, the next minute she is calling and treating him as if he were her ex-husband...and now she was trying to hide his presence from that same man. The right side of his brain told him that he should walk out there and let the man see that he'd been alone with his nearly naked ex-wife. Hadn't he accused him and Angel of consorting in the past? The other side, the rational one told him to calm the hell down and not get stupid in here. Christopher Prince is a highly trained, highly skilled Special Agent of the FBI. And not to mention the man is probably armed none the less.

_The coffee cups are still in there_ , Seth shuddered with his new thought. Both of those cups are still on that table. _Prince is also an investigator for God sakes, and an investigator is curious by nature and suspicious by career choice. The longer he hangs around the more likely he would realize that someone had been here. Or is still here, I've got to go_ —

Denise cried out with a fierceness that made her first scream before her ex-husband arrived pale in comparison. Now he could make out what she was saying. "No, Chris, I don't believe you... _nooooooooooo_." A new round of cries rushed to greet the first ones. " _Oh my God_ , _Chris, not my baby...nonononono_ ," She said until Seth's ears could no longer process the incoherent words falling from Denise's lips.

The muscles in Dr. Seth Dupree's neck grew tense. He'd never know the privileges of parenthood and likely never would.

Buy Seth's Seven year old brother Todd had died in a boating accident when was but five himself.

And he recognized the agonizing cry of a grieving parent when he heard it.
Chris

**Red Wine Road, 12** th **Day**

They arrived at the second 'murder' scene in a wooded area off of Red Wine Road, two and a half miles from where the first one had displayed itself to them.

It looked to Special Agent Christopher Prince that although Agent Sheridan was on the site already himself, that the authorities in general, and the FBI specifically hadn't got the tip first.

Two dozen reporters had lined up and leaned over the barricades that separated the vultures from another doll's body. He saw his partner, Tabitha Blue, parked with her arms folded next to Sheridan. Both were standing in the shadow of a huge uniformed cop whose red cheeks looked as if someone had just pinched them.

The day was picturesque, warmer and the shifting wind had blown the smoky haze due west of the city. _And here's another good portent_...The APD had learned from the near fiasco the other day and had dozens of off duty police officers mingling amongst the gathered crowd on onlookers.

He slammed the passenger side door of Angel's rental and his childhood friend rushing to match his pace from the other side despite her limp. They quickly passed the reporters who were all asking the same type of annoying questions that reporters always asked for which he and Angel both were answering "no comment" until one of them matched them movement for movement behind the barricade with a query that he did not escapade.

"Agent Prince... _Agent Prince_ , would it be fair to question your competency in leading this investigation considering your personal stake in what happened yesterday?" Lucy Burgess, of the Times asked him in her heavily South African accent.

Chris stopped his forward advancement long enough to acknowledge the woman's question and her huge overbite but so far had remained silent.

"After all, the rapid firing events that happened at the Carver Housing Projects were a mixed bag for you: Your half-brother Xavier launches a devastating attack that nets him 61 confirmed Choir Boys although the Bishop and his deacon managed to escape...the executions. Eight Peacekeepers died as well" Lucy said pushing a recorder towards his face. "And yet, your step daughter is one of a hand full of civilians who were also found deceased when the authorities arrived. And although her the certainty behind her death has yet to be determined—"

" _No comment_ ," He waved his hand at her and her device.

Angel must have felt his pulse racing in his neck and his ear. She put her small hand in his side and nudged him back in the direction that he had intended to reach before the other woman had distracted him.

"Christopher, calm down," She said barely loud enough above the noise of the crowd. She cut him off so that once again he couldn't get to the actual crime scene until he had. He stopped again, this time resting his hands on his hips and caught his breath. There was an untimely pang in his gut but he dared not reach to soothe it with all of these journalists present. He refused to throw more speculative wood for their fires.

Angel was saying: "Your step daughter's death isn't some nosy reporter's business, I don't care where the body was found—"

"I don't think she was alone." Chris answered an unasked question instead. "I can't shake the feeling that someone else was inside Denise's apartment when I arrived."

Angel cocked a brow in confusion. Chris had tried not to think about the personal implications or Erica's death on him or his ex-wife just now but Lucy Burgess had made that task damn near impossible now. He wanted to drop his professional demeanor and get angry. He wanted to punch something...or somebody for how rough this entire episode was going to be on Denise. He didn't love her now...that time had passed, but he had no desire to see her suffering the way the woman had suffered over the past 24 hours. _And yet, I can't help but to feel as if you were hiding something from me the other night._

But there was more than one reason that this case needed him to get his act together and refocus.

At least a second child, 13 year old Mathew Clifton, had joined Moses Jackson in the missing category. He had been outside playing a game of pickup basketball at a local park and had been raptured on his walk back home.

Angel seemed to get his reference was about his ex-wife and not his dead step daughter at last. "Alright, Christopher," She said shrugging her shoulders. She got in his wake so no one else would hear her. "You told me last night that Denise has engaged in a sexual relationship with another woman before. Even though she had come out of that particular closet with you doesn't make her immune from the potential embarrassment about being caught red handed; especially, with her ex-husband calling on her with the worst news imaginable."

"I considered that." He matched her tone and flashed his index finger at Sheridan who looked to be growing impatient with their delay. "Denise told me that it happened about six months after our divorce. And that it was an isolated onetime event and a one sided deal that satisfied her curiosity and another woman's aggressive posturing." I'm likely to have believed that scenario was reversed though, knowing Denise like I do.

"Did you consider that Denise could have been bedding a man that you know?" Angel asked. "Maybe he is a mutual friend of yours and she was trying to save all three of you from embarrassment."

Chris stared off into the bright afternoon sunlight. "I considered that too. I don't know, Doc, but there is _something_ more going on here."

Angel massaged his arm and raised her voice back to a normal pitch. "Alright, enough speculation about Denise's motives for right now. How is she doing?"

"She's doing as well as any woman who's lost her only child could be."

Angel locked her gaze on him and he had known no other choice but to be mesmerized by her big brown eyes. "Would you mind taking some professional advice from an old friend, Christopher?"

"Shoot,"

"Spend some time with her. Regardless to everything that's happened in the past, through all of the muck, the three of you shared a bond. That bond doesn't snap just because you two aren't together anymore. You were family." A smile played on her enhanced lips. "Look, I know that my relationships define the term 'complex', but you may be the only one who can help her through this. She's very vulnerable right now. Don't let anything push her over the edge."

Chris laughed and turned away. "You can't begin to understand the complexity...the volatility of this situation, Doc." He said looked back to where Lucy Burgess and her flock were still standing and he let out a low whistle. "If those reporters ever got wind of what Erica did..."

He turned back to Angel. "In speaking of complex, how's Seth? You've barely mentioned his name since we started working together again."

"What's to mention?" Angel looked uncomfortable...and used the opportunity to get the head start on the final few strides if would take to reach Sheridan and the others. "My husband is an excellent surgeon and an even more caring sensitive man."

"Angel, did your coming here throw some type of wedge between you two?" Chris rubbed at the day old stubble on the top of his head. "Hey, look, now it's my turn to apologize for dipping my nose where it doesn't belong. But you have told me before that Seth was a lot like Denise in that aspect, that he believed our relationship went far beyond a long childhood friendship and an occasional professional one."

"Stop it, Christopher." Angel stopped just short of where he others were and stroked his cheek with some affection. "I'm a difficult woman to live with. I know this. But I'm sure our situation will work itself out in the manner that it was always intended. These things always do."

"You're the Doc."

They joined Sheridan and the others by the crime scene. He caught Sheridan's eye and his boss greeted him and nodded curtly at Angel _. He doesn't appreciate being kept waiting but it_ _couldn't be helped_. Chris could feel the tension between them. And the aftermath of Xavier's bold decision to take Carver from the Choir Boys hasn't scored any points for the Prince family with authority figures either. Blue flashed a brief, sympathetic smile at him. He knew all of this had been tough on his partner. He appreciated her gesture.

"So it's another doll?"

Sheridan nodded. If there was to be a reprimand coming it would be handled later and in private. "And if I know my history, I would say this one mirrors another episode from the early 1980's."

It was Angel who was nodding. Blue planted her hands on her hips. Chris stooped down for a closer look.

"Has anyone else noticed the texture of this doll's face and hands? And what about the exaggerated length of his extremities...I believe that his arms and legs are far too long to belong to this body."

"Yea, Christopher." Angel agreed. "I did notice."

Blue said, "What about it?"

"I believe that this doll is a representation of a child that is older than the first. And although Mathew Clifton's disappearance doesn't put him officially missing for several more hours we can bet that this doll is a representation of him."

"Interesting," Sheridan got eye level with Chris. "And this texture you mentioned, it's older, it's dirtier. We do know that the Jackson kid was taken first right?"

"He was, Agent Sheridan." Angel said over both their shoulders. "In my time that I spent with Louis Keaton I took him to be very methodical, very organized when it came to his passions. My belief is that although he kidnapped Moses Jackson first, he actually had his eye trained on the Clifton child before he took Moses."

Sheridan nodded at the doctor—and then snapped his fingers in remembrance. "My apologies, Agent Christopher Prince, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree, this is officer Bucky Branch of the Atlanta Police Department." The big man nodded a hello to the two of them. "Would you mind repeating what your witnesses told you before?"

"Sure," He said and pulled out his notes. "Two of them said they saw a two door pickup, Probably a F150, casing this neighborhood over the past two or three weeks. I don't have to tell you people what goes in the woods around here, especially at night. Both of the witnesses just assumed it was a white guy looking for some crack or some head." His red cheeks reddened further as he peered at the two women who were present. "Sorry."

"A F150, huh," Chris asked and stooped down again. "There were tire tracks to and from the scene. "It's clean. There aren't any oil leaks."

Blue said, "The width of the track would verify a SUV or pickup truck of some type, but probably nothing more than that."

"And since it hasn't rained up here or anywhere else in a year, tracking this makes it even more difficult." Sheridan said. "Are you sure that none of your witnesses saw the perpetrator make his move? We are talking a very high profile case. We are talking the likely involvement of Pandora. Those facts may scare some folks out of fully cooperating if their afraid of some type of reprisal as a result of speaking with the police."

Branch shook his head.

Chris used the silence to say: "Moses was taken in the early evening. Mathew was told to be home just before the street lights came on...and his parents said they noted he hadn't returned about 30 minutes after that."

Sheridan looked as if he were getting a fresh measurement of the scene's perimeter. He looked at his Rolex. "Yea, but as important as those two boys are I'm as interested in when he staged this scene. First, he had to practice over and over again to get it just right. Secondly, once he set this up, he had to escape without being seen." He said. "Another bullet is incased in this dolls head. There is the presence of the rope just like before. This, boys and girls, is not an accident. There is a serpent somewhere in the ruins here. He's telling us something."

"Why are you looking at me like that, Christopher?"

He wasn't actually. He felt a moment of what exactly...déjà vu, vertigo, but for a moment he felt it he were on the outside of himself looking inwards. Now, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Sheridan and Blue fixing their glares on him as well. Officer Branch looked confused.

Angel tried to help. "Now that you've seen both scenes you're convinced that Hugh Keaton is responsible for this.

"Wait a sec," Blue said. "You just called the suspect _Hugh_. All along we've been addressing him as Louis or am I missing something?"

"You're not, Agent Blue. Keaton was born with his legal name being Hugh. We got some updated information from his file a day or so. That is the name on his social security card and on his birth certificate."

Angel looked at Chris when she said, "Somewhere in the days after he turned 18 he turned in an application for a legal name change...and _Louis_ Keaton was born. I had a half a dozen sessions with him during my stint in Pandora and I never could ascertain the absolute reasoning why he changed it."

Blue snorted. "That's an easy one, Doctor; he was trying to escape his past.

Angel rounded on her. "Or trying to embrace a new future perhaps?"

She must have felt all of their eyes are on her.

"That's my theory." She shrugged. "I don't believe that he was escaping Hugh...he is embracing Louis, whoever that person may have been."

"I would love to catch him and ask him that question, Doctor." Sheridan said.

"But the problem about why we are here comes down to answering two questions?"

Angel asked them for him. "Did Keaton set either of these models up for us to find and just importantly why did he do it?"

Chris squatted down again. "With the notable exception of the local authorities involved, some historians, and a few hard core nutcases out there, no one knows the specifics of this case better than Keaton does."

Angel was standing over him. "You're wrong, Christopher. There is one other person alive who would know, because he's the only living witness left to the first round of these horrible abductions."

Now it was Sheridan's turn to snort and he put his left hand in his pants pocket. "And he's safely locked away down state." Sheridan said, thanked Officer Branch for his time and testimony and dismissed him. The big man looked disappointed that he wouldn't be allowed to hang around with the plain clothed types any longer. "I'll vouch for the doctor on this one...and I know better than anyone what that surveillance around the Andrew Young Center told us on 411. I don't believe Louis Keaton...or whatever we're going to call him...I don't believe that he's a hardened killer."

Blue slammed her hands down on the hips of her tight pants. "That was years ago. I was barely born yet. Who's to say, especially under the influence and guidance of Serena Tennyson what this man is capable of now."

Angel stepped away from Chris and towards the younger woman and fixed her with a stare that he recognized all too well. "I do know, Agent Blue. I supervised his therapy for over 90 days. I had his records in my hands. I studied and compared the notes of other physicians and therapist who treated him for his longings well before I did." She softened her tone and decided that dressing down Agent Blue wasn't really getting the group anywhere. "Louis Keaton is a troubled man. Both of the dolls we've discovered so far have a real bullet lodged into the doll's head and the extremities roped together. I would bet my life on him of not being a direct threat to the boys lives and I don't believe he is strong enough, courageous enough, or organized enough to build these scenes."

"Are you prepared to gamble the life of these boys...and potentially others with your theories and conclusions, Doctor?"

Chris watched Angel look away from Blue and her question. He wanted to help his friend but he would have called himself a liar if he hadn't said that he was thinking along the same lines as his partner. The four of them stood in the awkward silence for a spell, sucking in the dry air, when Sheridan broke the silence at last.

"Doctor, I've studied your notes on Bipolar Disorder and some of the other illnesses of the like. Your opinion seems to fall out of line with most of your colleagues."

Angel nodded.

"You've written that some of the symptoms of Bipolar Disorder include depression, high anxiety, eating disorders and the victim having constant...sometimes recurring nightmares."

"I did."

"But you stated in one of your last papers, that he was as stable as you had witnessed, even when you spoke by phone to him recently. Have you considered the possibility that Keaton has had a major relapse?"

Chris spoke up first. "I've thought about the possibility that he is going through even a further internal conversion."

"I would be irresponsible for ruling anything out at this moment, of course." Angel hugged herself and Chris could tell that her leg was tiring. "I believe the Hugh persona capable of staging all of this. Agent Sheridan you're right, most people in my field disagree with me on Keaton's specifics. Look, the last time I saw him, I treated him as if he were suffering from Dissocialized Identity Disorder. If he were my patient right and now I would continue treating him for the same thing. That's why I believe that he's fully reverted back into his Louis persona."

Sheridan frowned. "Louis?"

Chris knew that Angel was comfortable in her element here. And he could safely assume that she either couldn't or didn't get tore up the night before...and that added to her sharpness.

"It would be easier for you to understand and for me to explain if we back up a step or two." Angel explained patiently like any good teacher would talk to her students. "Agent Sheridan, where I disagree with the other professionals along certain psychological levels is this: DID in theory is a clash between two or more distinct personalities. Each personality has its own patterns and perceptions and more importantly, its own voice. Keaton adapts and interacts within the stimuli he is given in any environment."

"Speak English, Doctor," Blue said with an air of inpatients. "What exactly does any of that psychobabble mean?"

"It means that you've pushed your FBI training away from the social sciences, Agent Blue. It also means that I believe in DID, especially in this case." And since she had all of their attention, she added something more. "I believe that it is the number one rising social disorder or mental defect in this country."

_My God, has Denise ever suffered from something like this_. He wondered if there was still time to help her. "And is it fair to say that you believe that this DID is often misdiagnosed as Bipolar Disorder?" Chris asked the question that needed to be asked right now.

"I do." Angel's hazel eyes sparkled, ever thankful for his support.

Sheridan said: "And Keaton? This entire equation leads back to him somehow.

"Let's say that in the worst case scenario you're right, Agent Sheridan. Let's say that Serena Tennyson has turned him loose." Angel said and stooped down where he had been before. "I'll reiterate that in my sessions with him, I failed to reach the conclusion to whom or where this Louis persona was or where he came from. I'll repeat that I don't know him to be capable enough for of this type or organization that you see here. And if Serena Tennyson has mistakenly put her faith in him to serve her needs, she is walking around with a grenade with the pin pulled out.

Now it was Chris who took his turn at showing inpatients. "You told me over and over again that trying to reach this Hugh persona was the basis of all your work in Pandora."

"It was and I tried." Angel stood back up, but seemed smaller now. _With all of the stress_ _and the pain in your leg, how much will you drink tonight_? "Hugh Keaton is the one _true_ personality. He retreats into the Louis personality from time to time and even others, but it never last. Hugh always pushes himself back to the surface. Perhaps...perhaps Serena found an avenue, an opening that I didn't see. She lacks my professional training, but I 've never met anyone more ruthless in the pursuit of her agenda."

Sheridan said, "She was involved in these therapy sessions with you?"

Angel looked Sheridan directly in his eyes. "Serena knows everything that I do." She made her voice gruff. "And she's had more time to steer him towards whatever methodology that she's chosen."

"Great," Blue said.

Sheridan cocked a bushy brow. "Dr. Hicks-Dupree, in your expert medical opinion, are these two boys lives in immediate danger or not? How much time do we actually have to find them?"

Angel shrugged. "That depends on a lot of variables that I can't account for, sir. I don't know how much leverage Serena has gained over him. I'm unaware to how much self-control Hugh has learned since I last saw him. He may possess the power to switch back and forward from personality to personality by now. That ability would make him nearly invulnerable from capture."

Chris made the rounds measuring his coworker's faces after the punch of Angel's last statement landed. Sheridan's blank glare was only broken when his cell rang...and he waved a silent goodbye to the party. Blue trailed off to more comfortable surroundings and conversations by moving to conduct a second interview with one of Officer Branch's witnesses in the only way that Tabitha Blue knew how.

With the scene clearing, Special Agent Christopher Prince resumed his inspection of the scene from his squatted position, getting as close to the data as the space allowed.

An image of a dead Erica...and then one of his 12 year old self flashed one after the other, but with some concentration he chased both of them away. He'd had his own therapy sessions over the years. He could recite those damned steps in the breathing techniques almost verbatim.

"They'll be more kidnappings." He said more to himself than he did to Angel. "One of these two boys will be set up as his general. He'll be responsible for watching over the other captives. He'll be used to help keep the other boys in line. Keaton will need him to help keep them all safe."

He felt both Angel's hands on his shoulder. It was her turn to support him. "Hopefully, one of them will be as strong as you were in their role as the general. None of them will survive the coming days without his courage."

"I know that."

"Well know this as well, Christopher: I'm sure that you, the FBI, and everyone else in the free world are convinced that Keaton is responsible for these probable abductions—"

"As he was responsible for the majority of kidnappings during what became known as the Atlanta Child Murders 30 years ago."

"Alright," She said as Chris stood and turned to face her at last. "Then let's satisfy all of our theories so that we both can move forward. I know a way we can do just that. But I'm sure you're not going to like it."

"These boy's lives are on the line, Angel." He said. "It doesn't mean one hell of a lot what I don't like right now."

"I only pray that if Keaton is doing this, that he will behave and keep his hands to himself over the next 24 hours while we're gone."

" _Gone_ ," Chris asked. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

"You're boss said that the only other one who would know this terrain and detail was safely locked up down state. I think it's time for you and I get the unique perspective of the man serving time for many of the Atlanta Child Murders. I think we should pay him a visit."

"Muhammad Clark." Chris heard the disdain and defeat in his own voice. "You're right, Doc. I don't like your idea one bit."

They needed a fresh prospective of the only other pedophile that had come close to accomplishing what Louis Keaton has accomplished. Angel was right.

And Special Agent Christopher Prince knew it.
Louis

**Undisclosed Location, 13** th **Day**

Mathew Clifton had tried to kill himself.

Louis had tried to warn Serena's Agents watching them the boy was growing more distant. He attempted it while the idiots stood outside of the bathroom while he supposedly bathed.

The relationship, if it could be called that, between Louis and the guards had been dissolving ever since they arrived at the sanctuary. It was especially bad when the leader of Pandora herself wasn't around. They called him all kind of names and made crude gestures at him.

The bathroom and the shower areas were one of many places where the close circuit cameras were running feeds 24 hours a day. Poor Mathew tried to drown himself in a pool of his own dirty water when Louis pushed himself through the door and pulled him to the surface of the tub. _No matter_ , Hugh reminded him. _The Dragon Woman will blame Us for this_. And then the other's voice in his head became almost a whisper as if outsiders could truly hear him at all. _Take the boys and go._ Louis refused to listen to voice...he had little choice in hearing him, but listening and doing were different matters all together.

Anyway, Moses and Mathew were safer here. And he had more work to do for both Serena and—

These boys are ours. The Dragon Woman will not claim them as the Caretaker claimed our last feast.

Louis instructed the guards to bring Moses to his room. Louis' room was square shaped windowless chamber with a single king sized bed. It was camera less, or so Louis theorized. He tested that idea last night when he masturbated time and again to see if the guards would add a new name to the list they already referred him by. They had not. Serena knew for him to be truly effective when the time for him...to show his passion for the boys, he would need at least a small essence of privacy.

Moses set as far away from Louis as could manage on the bed. But it wasn't because of the distance that the boy appeared small. Moses had refused to eat anything offered to him so far. He was losing weight rapidly and some of the color was draining out of his face. Louis thought he was the ghostly mirrored image of the way his mother would look after one of his sessions with Uncle Templeton so long ago.

"Moses," Louis sat on the floor to try to make the boy feel more secure. "May I have a few minutes of your time?"

Moses shook his head violently. "No...I don't want to. Please don't—"

Louis raised his hand for calm. "No, no it's not that time— _yet_ , _but you can bet your_ _bottom dollar it is coming and soon, my boy._ "Don't be afraid, son, I only want to talk to you. I need a favor from you. Will you help me out?"

Perhaps his tone or his words had won out because he seemed to have piqued the boy's interest enough for Moses to look at him at least.

"What do you want from me?"

Louis slid across the floor to meet the child on the other side. "I'm sure you've heard what happened to Mathew the other day. I'm sure he talked to you about it."

Moses nodded.

Louis glanced around the room—at his sanctuary. "My work here is far from finished." He turned his full gaze and his magnificent blue eyes on Moses. "I'm soon to bring more boys here for you and Mathew to play with. I'll be here as often as I can. Those mean guards will be here in shifts, but they will watch us 24 hours a day."

Moses nodded some more.

"I need someone to look over our friends that are still to come. I want you to help me keep them safe from harm. I don't want anything to happen to them...or _you_. Mathew could have died in that bathtub. And those stupid guards are just imbeciles carrying guns with those same weapons as their only solution for solving problems."

"I've seen them. I've seen those guns you're talking about."

"They can't be trusted." Louis shook his head gravely. "I'm going to appoint you to be in charge of the other boys—the troops when I'm away. I'm looking for a man to be my strong right hand, my general."

"I don't know how."

"You'll learn, Moses. You'll learn what to say them and when you should say it. You'll know how to lead them—"

"Lead them where?"

Louis reached up and ran his fingers across through the boy's close cropped hair on his head. It was intoxicating.

You are so Ours, my boy. We can almost taste you already.

Louis shrugged off Hugh. "Darkness is coming to this sanctuary...to this compound like nothing you or I have ever seen. I'll need you to lead the troops. Where you go they are most certain to follow."

"How am I supposed—"

"How are you supposed to know?" Louis asked the question for young Moses. You just will. You are smarter than you know, Moses. You're stronger than you'll ever believe."

Moses slid up the bed and away from Louis and started crying. "I just want to be left alone. I just want to go home to my family."

_So do We_. "Like I said, Moses, I'll be drafting others. They'll soon be joining us."

"I don't want—"

" _Listen_ ," Louis said in an elevated voice. Moses tears had rattled a nerve. "I need your full cooperation, Moses. I cannot accept a refusal. There is no time left for you to say no. Can't you see...can't you see that I won't be able to fight him off much longer?"

"Fight off whom, what are you talking about?"

Louis abruptly got to his feet, smoothed out his jeans, and walked towards the only entrance/exit of the chamber. He turned back to Moses. "These children will cry for their mothers and that's ok. They'll be afraid of course, all new recruits are scared at first—"

Moses said, "I'm afraid too. How can I help them if I'm scared also?"

Louis turned to leave him there, but peeked over his left shoulder at him. "It's ok if they cry sometimes." He said as if Moses hadn't spoken his last words. "There are some things we mustn't allow: There must be no further suicide attempts. You know that suicide is a sin after all. More importantly, Moses is that your brothers in arms must not attempt to escape this place. If you do get outside of this compound nothing but death awaits you, I can promise you that."

Just as Louis opened to the door to the rest of the compound he heard Moses Stand up.

"Why should they listen to me? I'm just a kid like they are."

Louis made himself smaller by placing his hands on his knees. "Because you are the chosen one... _my_ chosen one, you are my general and my right hand. They'll see how much I lean on you. And they'll begin to trust you as you begin to trust me; just like they trusted Christopher Prince before

"Why should I do this?"

"I'll give you my word that if you do cooperate...that I will _never_ touch you." _What...what kind of fucking deal is that? "_ You'll be spared what I have in store for the others." Louis held up his fingers like a boy scout.

Moses looked doubtful. "I don't know that you were ever a scout."

Louis couldn't help but to laugh. "You don't actually. That is a fair point." He wiped spittle from his lip. "You only have my word, Moses, man to man. We can't fail here. Failure is not an option from this point forward. The cost to so many would be astronomical."

Moses nodded and Louis knew he had his general at last. "I understand what the word failure means. My nana has apologized to me and my brother and sister more than once. She said that she was a failure for how she raised my mamma. My nana told me that we children were paying a high price everyday of our lives."

And your nana's failures and your mother's drug addiction led you directly into Our arms. Her failure may lead you to your death.

Louis tried to tune out Hugh while he listened to this special child that he had chosen so very well. It broke his heart to hear the little man speak like this. He called for the guards to escort him back to the holding area with Mathew. When they were out of site at last he turned around—

And found Serena Tennyson standing not five feet from his position.

He tried to mask the fact that she startled him, but the blotch of urine surely showing on his jeans surely betrayed that fact by now.

She said, "And who will pay the price for my failures I wonder?"

We told you that the Dragon Woman spies on Us. She doesn't trust Us for one minute. We say that We should kill her right now. We should kill the Dragon Woman and be done with it.

"Serena," He said aloud in a sheepish tone. "You look well and refreshed. I'm glad that you joined us. Say hello to Moses Jackson."

Serena spoke to the boy without smiling. "He's your general." She waved her hand at the guards just the opposite side of the room from her for them to take the boy back to the holding area.

"How are you today?" She asked after Moses was led away.

"I'm fine." He lied and looked to steer any conversation away from his mental state. "I've chosen each of these children specifically. I did this on my own. Shouldn't I be allowed to speak to speak to them every now and then without disruption?"

Serena smoothed out the pants leg of her suit, sat down, and crossed one leg over the other. "Of course you should communicate with them. I certainly don't have a problem with that." And although she oversaw the construction of this compound she seemed to pay close attention to this particular chamber where Moses had vacated. "You called all of your prospects special children, but I sense something more when you speak about this Moses child."

Louis smiled a little. "He is more than just special, Serena. He is extraordinary."

Serena's brown eyes borrowed into his ocean blues. "Is he as extraordinary as Christopher Prince was?"

"He is a lot like Christopher, yes." He had said neutrally hoping the conversation would end right here.

"He served as your first general?"

"Serena, you know all of this already." He said. She flashed him a look that said, _tell me the story again._

Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree had been more than a competent Psychologist. She probably come the closest of any of the professionals that he'd seen over the many years, who truly understood his nature. Dr. Dupree-Hicks... _that rhymes with licks_ ; But Serena Tennyson was beyond methodical in her approach to everything...and that included him. _That's why We won't_ _truly be safe until the Dragon Woman is a corpse. Do it now, Coward. The guards won't reach this point in time._

"Chris served my needs well, Serena. He kept those children safe...and quiet for the most part. And after what Mathew pulled yesterday...I need Moses to grow into this roll expeditiously."

"And yet, after Chris escaped you the rest of if ended poorly." Serena stayed on subject.

_Our business usually does, Dragon Woman. You'll find out soon enough if you don't let_ _us alone_. "It did." And it comforted him somehow to say it aloud. "Caretaker ordered the other boys killed after Chris escaped. He was frightened that Chris would lead the authorities back to the compound, back to Pandora."

"He could have simply moved the operation."

"The operation was near the bottom of the list of his concerns. His identity was endangered."

"You're right, of course, Louis." Serena got up off of the bed and ran a smooth palm across his cheek. "You've grown so much since then...since 411 even. I'm more confident than ever that you will persevere." She opened the door and took her turn at exiting—

"Then my I ask why you continue to spy on me?"

"I prefer to call them 'simple observations." Serena replied. "You shouldn't overly concern yourself with it or allow it to affect your work here."

"I call it spying."

"Call it what you will." Serena said in a voice that was ice cold. "As long as you understand that these simple observations will continue from time to time. Caretaker was nearly a god in my eyes. But the one mistake he made was allowing you too much time and space in completing your work. He lost his entire operation over it. The match that started the fire between ours and theirs should have been struck right then. Pandora would have crushed a House in Chains 30 years ago." Serena's tone almost became apologetic. "I won't repeat his mistake here. There is so much more at stake now. There is so much more than you will ever realize. I don't want have to summon up the Whirlwind."

Louis gave up his argument...for now. "As you've said before, I've passed every test so far. And as I've said before, I won't fail you."

"You've succeeded on so many levels, already, Louis. Look at this place: We've engineered this compound based on the specifications of models and designs of your ideas. You chose the location. It's a brilliant sanctuary." Serena said. "You should remain undisturbed from outside forces while you continue your work here. No one will find this location."

"That is why Moses role is so critical. The others must not attempt to escape. It's at least ten miles in any direction towards civilization once you leave this compound. Death awaits them outside these grounds. I need them to remain safe and secluded long after your people leave us after this Whirlwind of yours takes hold. That is why Moses is so important. I don't care what they think about me if they trust Moses, it improves their chances of survival."

Serena smiled at him.

And just as suddenly he began to tear up before the smile faded...possibly forever. Serena flashed him a look of mild concern. He began to feel a trembling in his shoulders...and when she reached for him, he shied away from her touch. We are so weak and pathetic.

"What is it, Louis?" She asked him. "What's wrong?"

Louis got himself together and said: "For a moment, when you smiled, your facial expression reminded me of my mother."

"Really," Serena's new expression showed that she was trapped somewhere between fascination and annoyance. No woman in her 40's, no matter how hard, wants to be compared to nearly 60 year old man's mother. "Why do you say this?"

"It's just a look, a facial expression." Louis said again. "My mother loved me, Serena, of this I have no doubt, but her approval was often difficult to come by. Yet, every so often I would complete a task that pleased her."

Serena took a step closer. She was the leader of Pandora which meant that she knew all of Louis Keaton's dirty little secrets. If she didn't know every detail she had to be aware of the overtures of his life.

"Louis," She said, "Why did you mother allow her brother to molest you?"

_So the Dragon Woman does not see and know all_. Yet, it was a straightforward enough question. It was one that he knew that this woman and her methodical nature would bring up time and again so why not answer her now. _Leave Us alone, bitch._ Hugh fought reliving this tale again. It was his tale for the most part after all, Louis only had a secondary role...and it came a little later.

"I don't have a simple explanation for it. I'm sure you studied Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree's notes."

"I have at that. Her notes inform me of how your situation concluded. I've never understood how your life evolved before that point. But this isn't mere curiosity on my part. I want to compete all the work that all of your past doctors, including Angel, who treated you. I want to help you."

No...you want to manipulate Us into completing you bidding, you bitch.

"My mother and I were very poor. She had me when she was 15.We traveled from place to place around western Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas never staying in one residence or place for very long. Mom was a border line alcoholic. Either the booze, or showing up late because of the boozing, or not having adequate transportation cost her job after job." Louis was amazed at how it still broke his heart to tell this tale of yesterday. "After many struggles my mother took to shacking up with anyone who would take us in. Like I said, Serena, we were very poor. She didn't have much to offer anyone who we lived with."

"So your mother sold her sex to these men to keep a roof over both of your heads." Serena looked as if she would be ill.

"Yes."

"Go on, Louis, tell me the rest."

Louis exhaled deeply. "A few of the men were pleasant enough. I remember that one or two of them actually treated me with some kindness. They'd take me hunting or fishing or would play baseball with me during the summer months."

"Did any of them touch you?"

"No." Louis said and thought that his revelation surprised her. "It wasn't like that at all...and my mother satisfied their needs well enough."

"What went wrong?"

"Like I've told you, I was treated well for the most part by all these different men." He felt his teeth chattering. "Mom wasn't so fortunate. Several of these men slapped her around pretty good. One man in particular was brutal to her. Every three or four days I would walk home from school and see fresh bruises on her face or arms or on her back. She was a strong woman who rarely showed emotion, even during those difficult times. But there were a couple times that I saw her emotionally break down. I would get angry enough to launch myself at these men and fight them. But I was always too little...to weak and pathetic."

"And this Uncle of yours," Serena wanted to get to the desert without eating the entire meal first. "What finally led you to her brother's place?"

Louis swallowed hard. "We moved in with him just before school started when things went very badly at our previous place. My mom spent three weeks in a county hospital after our last landlord split her head open with a wrench over his dinner being burned."

"Bless the Dragon's flames."

"My Uncle reluctantly took us in. Mom was so happy to be back in her childhood home of Memphis, Tennessee however. And she had learned her lessons about the boozing. She quit drinking and found a job—a good job a few weeks later. The jobsite was actually within walking distance of my Uncle's place. Life was good for a while. I even made a friend. Up into that point, he was the most important person ever to come into my life."

"And then,"

"My Uncle learned what Mom was making down at the factory. He kept raising the cost of our rent until he nearly broke her." Louis said with bitterness. "Mom finally told him that she had nothing else to offer him but he disagreed. He kept gawking at me with a wide grin on his grill when he said this."

Serena wrinkled her nose. "He asked for you as payment."

"That's what he told her. That's what he demanded."

"And your mother just... _gave you to him_." Serena's disgusted tone had returned in full glory. "She gave you up just like that."

Waterfalls of tears fell from the ocean blues of Louis Keaton's eyes. "Don't you judge her." He pointed his finger at her as he did when he learned actual children of color were in the Andrew Young Center when he detonated the bomb that took so many lives weeks ago now. He did not retract it this time however. "What other choice did she have? She was making good money, but not enough to afford the high priced housing near the plant. Her earlier boozing had cost her any chance of being issued a license to drive ever again. This job was a good one. And she was trying to save for a place of our own, but my Uncle's pillaging of her wages spoiled that—"

" _What kind of woman willingly gives her child to a pedophile_?"

And so Louis grabbed Serena.

He had her throat in his grip before his conscious mind realized it. He slammed her head against the wall and heard her men enter the area locking their weapons on him. _We told you_ _your time was coming bitch. We told you_. He'd made such a terrible mistake, but there was no way of backing out of this now. He'd let himself down. But more importantly, he let those two boys down...especially Moses Jackson. Right after Serena's men disposed of him; they would kill both of those boys before his body even cooled.

Serena tried to unhand his fierce grip on her long neck and throat with one hand, while waving her men...away with the other.

"Stand down," She somehow managed. "Everything...is...under control, isn't it, Louis?"

Louis peered back and forward from Serena Tennyson in his grip, to the four semi-automatic weapons trained at his skull, to the room where the two boys were being secured.

He loosened his grip on her neck and said, "My mom had taken care of the two of us long enough, Serena." He continued his story as if it had never been interrupted. "It was simply my turn is all. She could keep her job at the plant. I could stay in a school that I liked. And I could keep my special friend."

He released Serena completely and waited on her men to kill him where he stood. Again, Serena waved them off while she coughed and struggled to catch her breath again. She seemed to get her equilibrium under her at last. Still, Louis began to countdown how many second he had left in his life. He had always heard that people saw flashes of light before they died.

Louis was seeing numbers.

"What did your mother do...while...this payment went on?" Serena said returning to full height. She straightened out her suit. "What did she do when you Uncle molested you?"

Louis Keaton's tears fell readily now. "She made him do it when she was home. I don't know, maybe she felt as if she could monitor it somehow. We never talked about it." Louis paused for a long time and wiped his tears away. "But I do remember that between my uncle's bouts of heavy breathing and grunting that I could hear my Mom's cries that were so loud that it would often drown out my own."

And so Louis told Serena the rest.

He told her about a boy named Louis...how the most important person he'd ever met came into his life—and just as abruptly abandoned it.

He told her about how his fear of helicopters had come.

And when he was done at last he said, "I've never asked anyone to cry for me."

Serena Tennyson did not cry...though that nearly was the case. She got her cell out instead and hit the speed dial of a woman who was always dressed for death and all in black.

"Rohm," Serena said in a commanding tone. "Pack a bag. I have something for you to do."
Episode 4 Past Prologue 
Chapter Ten

My Father's first mandate states that you and I should respect ourselves. I'll boldly take his words one step further: I'm sure that he would want us—as Black men, to place ourselves on the highest moral pedestal. We should push ourselves beyond any expectations that society burdens us with. My brothers, we must change how we talk, we must change how we walk. We must set a new standard for our sons and the _Rooster's_ sons to emulate.

-Xavier Prince in a speech given at a NACCP rally in July of 2000.
Thomas

**Atlanta Journal Constitution (Editor's Suite), NW Atlanta, 14** th **Day**

Bernard Lott.

The Senior Editor of the _Times_ was a Black man who stood as tall as he was wide. He had a newly clean shaven head, sleepy eyes, a wide nose, and spoke with an authorize voice fit for command.

A toothy thin woman who Thomas thought was a one night stand in waiting ushered him into the older man's office and shut the door as she exited. Lotto was on a conference call with what sounded like two of his beat writers, men that Thomas knew from his time here. Lotto acknowledged his presence without looking up, wrapping up his conference with his guys.

The suite was spacious and a splendid piece of architecture. It had a spectacular view of the downtown Atlanta skyline behind Lotto's desk. Across the floor was a loveseat similar to those that Thomas knew were manufactured across the Atlantic, especially in Greece and Italy. Thomas ran his thick fingers across the armrest and his touch confirmed that it was fine Italian engineering after all.

Photos of Lotto's meetings with former presidents, prime ministers, state governors and other heads of state lined the far wall. Thomas even saw one showcasing the two of them standing with Ernestine Johnson at some function or the other during her first term as Atlanta's Mayor.

Thomas glared at the picture for an extra minute. _If we only knew, Mayor Johnson, what_ _was ahead of us then would we have even bothered to smile?_

Littered on his desk were pictures of Lotto's grown children when they were much younger. Thomas made a mental note when he noticed that the picture of the man's wife of thirty some odd years was absent from where it stood before. Thomas knew from experience that it probably meant that Lotto's fidelity issues were flaring up once more. The room stank of cigar smoke which meant that Lotto wasn't playing by those rules again either.

Lotto hit the button ending his call. The Editor and Chief approached him. Thomas grinned, extended his hand, but his former boss would have nothing to do with such a bland formality and bear hugged him instead. Lotto held him close until he got an up close and personal look at Thomas shiner.

"What in the hell happened to you, Tommy?" Lotto asked. He offered Thomas the chair nearest his desk and sat back down in his own recliner. Lotto deactivated the alarm for the window from a button underneath his desk and while still seated, manually opened it behind him. Two minutes later he got his cigar going the way he wanted to.

"Nothing," Thomas lied to his friend. "And everything. How are you, Lotto? You called me remember. It was an important enough issue for you not to leave this to one of your assistants, but to make the call yourself. Why did you ask for me to come down here?"

"You know it's always good to see you, Tommy." He said, and eased back into the recliner. He took two puffs of his cigar. "Now, which one was it? I just have to know?"

Thomas grinned again.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Ernest."

Lotto pointed the ash end of the cigar at Thomas eye. "Which one of those estranged husband's finally nailed your ass."

Thomas laughed out loud.

Lotto said, "Come one, Tommy. I've got a 100 bucks riding on this."

"You've got it all wrong. It's not like that at all." Thomas replied.

And it wasn't.

Thomas had just exited the city's largest public library after doing some extended research on Microfiche about Pandora's origins dating back to the 1980's. Thomas hadn't trusted using his computer or doing much else in his townhome since Serena's impromptu visit. He had three different highly capable organizations in the FBI, A House in Chains and Pandora who were probably tapping into his private affairs. It was enough to make even him nervous.

And now he had the incident outside the library to add to his paranoia.

Thomas had noticed a white man, who needed a new suit, trailing his footsteps and stopped to confront him on the reason _why_ before he reached the more secluded and dark areas of the parking garage. The man was half way lit up on... _something_...and told Thomas that he thought it was real fucked up that he'd betray his own people for the likes of _them_. Thomas calmly explained that he was doing his job. He was going to gather in the facts. And let those facts decide—that's when the man got in his face and looked to dip his hand into his coat pocket to grab something or the other.

Thomas punched him first. His opponent got in a couple of jabs in, but Thomas used his superior size, strength, stamina, and boxing experience to wear the culprit down. The street looked empty afterwards. Thomas was sure that he'd broken the man's nose as he saw there was blood racing from it and his mouth as well.

"Tommy?" Lotto had been trying to extend a cup of coffee to him for how long? "Do you want this or not?"

"Yea," Thomas said, trying to swim up the current back into the present. "And which of these husbands did you bet on finding out about me and his wife?"

Lotto took another long puff off of his cigar and let the thick smoke filter out of his nose. "Telling you would spoil most of the fun. And don't you dare look at me like that. You should know better than to take it personal, Tommy." Lotto said. "You know that I'm all about two things: Business and winning."

"Business, huh, well, it's good to know that no matter how much the Earth may fall off of its axis from time to time that some things don't change, especially here at the _Times_." Thomas sat up straight and put his shoes flat on the hard wood floor as if he were bracing himself. "What's this about, Ernest?"

Lotto punched the ash end of his cigar out in this ashtray which Thomas always took as a sign that the man was ready for business. "Don't play coy with me, Tommy, You know what I want."

Thomas nodded. "Ok, so let's say that I do. You know that I can't do it even if I wanted to. I can't discuss any of it on any official level."

"Of course you can't, Tommy Boy...but you'll do it anyway. Lotto pulled what looked to be a two page document out of his brief case and slid it over to his side of the desk. Thomas glanced over the letterhead briefly. "After I hung up with you yesterday, I cleared this with the publisher and now know that I can offer you this proposal."

Thomas scanned the finer points of the context including an impressive six figure compensation with his name typed at the bottom. The document only needed his signature next to his printed name for it to be complete. He slid it back to his former employer, never taking his fingers off until it until it reached him.

"Sorry," Thomas said. "That's a no go, Lotto. And before you start...it's not about the money. That's more than a fair offer and I thank you for it. But it's a no go. And I don't want to hear anything else about it."

Ernest Lott got to his feet. "Oh, you'll hear me out, Tommy Boy, and you'll _like_ what I'm telling you."

Thomas rose with his friend and put his hands in his pockets. "Right," He said. "Next, you'll have me believe that Ernest Lott, super editor, will stoop to the level of indignity of what is known as begging me."

"I was hoping you would save me that much trouble, but what the hell?" Lotto planted his elbows on the desk and assumed a praying pose that Thomas would have thought priceless if it were at all genuine. "Alright, Tommy, I am officially begging you."

"Save it, Lotto." Thomas smiled and sat back down and waited on his friend and mentor to do the same. Thomas spread his hands wide. "I am doing an investigation for our former Mayor. A woman that this paper...and _you_ endorsed in her campaign for that office twice; I'm going to present my findings from this investigation soon. You know that I can't ally myself with any media outlet of any type if I'm to retain the slightest chance in hell of neutrality on this one." Thomas stopped for breath and to measure how his friend was taking in all of this. "You are the Senior Editor in Chief of a newspaper that has been traditionally classified as a liberal publication."

Lotto sat up straight and put his own thick finger index finger in front of his lips. "You know using the term liberal is forbidden if not taboo terminology in this building, Tommy Boy." He sat back then, resting his hands behind his bald head. "I thought I taught you better than that. You apparently laminated all those notes about journalistic integrity and that other bullshit, but forgot all about loyalty."

Thomas' gaze turned serious. "I haven't forgotten what you and this paper did for my career."

Lotto snorted. "You could have fooled me. It wasn't easy for a lowly junior editor working in Chicago to convince his bosses to give a snotty nose kid fresh out of a small, irrelevant, area state college a shot at the big time. You began writing for one of the largest distributed daily papers in the country."

Thomas smiled at the memory of days long gone by. "I've told you time and time again, Lotto, that wasn't snot in my nose. It was chicken soup. I was living on the stuff back in those days."

"Maybe, but I wasn't finished yet," Lotto snapped his finger, remembering another detail. "And then many years later, I also gave the first rousing review for an unauthorized biography of Cathy Hooks that most papers called slightly bloated, if not overwritten."

"And may I remind you that the bloated and overwritten biography won a Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year." Thomas straightened his tie for emphasis. "And its author gave his first interview to the paper you were editing when the book hit number one of the New York Times Bestseller List."

Lotto looked wounded. "I thought our relationship had grown well beyond reciting what we've done for one another, Tommy Boy." And then a grin formed on his face. "You continue to disappoint me, Thomas. I guess I have no one else to blame but myself. I had such high hopes for you."

"Join the crowd. But then good judgment never has been my strong suit has it?"

"That interview with Beverly Hooks, Cathy's daughter was one of the few. How is the old girl?"

She wasn't well and Thomas told his friend with a degree of sadness. Beverly's oldest son had put his mother into a nursing home after a year of complications from Alzheimer's made it impossible for him and his wife to care for her any longer. Thomas thought it was remarkable that a woman who had such a remarkably sharp memory could lose it all in such a short span of time. She was Thomas main source for the biography about her mother Cathy—a survivor of the Atlanta riots of 1906. Cathy had disobeyed her father's instructions to stay in the house when an assembly of white men took her father away when they came looking for some Black Man... _any_ Black man to lynch for the rape and murder of a couple of white women in the alley behind an after-hours establishment. Cathy had tracked them down as they readied her father for his lynching and hanging. Beverly had told Thomas that the leader of the mob was a White man that she'd seen hanging around with her dad on numerous occasions as they drink and whored together.

The old White man had told Cathy's father that she had _one_ —and only one chance to leave there before she risked being raped and murdered herself. Tearfully, Cathy's father kissed his devoted daughter on her forehead and pleaded with her to run away. He told her to run away and not look back. Cathy looked into her father's eyes for a few seconds more with a waterfall of tears in her eyes and did as her father beckoned.

She did not look back.

"Thomas," Lotto had said when the old tale had told itself out. It was time to get on with the here and the now "Look, what happened down at your townhouse...and then at the FBI field office, seriously. Are you alright?"

Thomas felt a warmness flow through his shoulder blades. He was reminded why he appreciated this man's friendship. "Yea, thanks. I'm going to get through this someway or the other. If Cathy Hooks can stare down a racist mob and live to see another day then I can see this through to its end without looking back as well."

"I know that you will."

"Well, in case I don't, you can help me help you."

"You're not making any sense, Tommy Boy."

Thomas Pepper gave the Senior Editor's office a hard once over and then lowered his voice. "I told you that I won't share what I know with you in any official capacity. But I will tell you what I know _unofficially_. These are serious people that I'm dealing with across the aisle...across all these aisles."

"Tommy Boy, you sound a little scared."

"I _am_ scared, Lotto. If I wasn't...then being questioned by the FBI before and after Serena's escape and seeing on television what Xavier Prince and a House in Chains did at Carver instilled a little fear in me."

"Alright, Thomas, if you need me to be confidential, then I will be. What do you have?"

Thomas reached into his jacket and slid his own two page document at the other man. "I'm sorry, Lotto. Even your word is not good enough considering what I know and the ramifications of it being leaked before I'm ready to talk."

Ernest Lott yanked an expensive fountain pen from his shirt pocket, scanned the papers briefly...and scribbled his name next to the printed version at the bottom of the page.

"I'm giving this paper...and you to right disclose this information if I am somehow incapacitated before I'm ready to take this public." Thomas said.

"I'm the Senior Editor here, Thomas." Ernest Lott said with some heat. Thomas knew the man was upset about having to sign a contract. But Thomas needed the extra protection against Lotto running this story in the _Times_. He knew his old mentor wouldn't like it, but he knew that he would sign the document just as he did. He also knew that he would get over it...in due time. "I can read. Now talk to me."

Thomas had gained an anonymous source. He (or she) had contacted him on his cell shortly before Thomas had his second interview with Special Agents Christopher Prince and Tabitha Blue at the field office just prior to Serena's escape during Deliverance. The voice was disguised electronically. It said: _The world wrongly believes that Adolphus Sweet was killed by a sniper's bullet._

Thomas remembered the man had been campaigning for a second term near in Houston when he went down from a sniper's bullet as he left the Toyota Center. The president did not die that day...he was already dead before that bullet struck him. The murder attempt on his life only expedited the process of the guilty party going through what they had been planning to do all along.

Ernest Lott sat back in his recliner again and let out a low whistle. "Ernestine asked you to find the questions to the three questions that every Man of Color...what most people in this country wants to know: Who killed President Adolphus Sweet, who is the Caretaker, and what is the Whirlwind?

Thomas nodded but looked away.

"So what did the 'source' tell you the real reason behind President Sweet's death?"

"He was _poisoned_...just like Ernestine Johnson was." The poison somehow lay inactive inside of his system for weeks. The responsible party only activated it after Sweet was shot.

"Do you believe this source, Thomas?"

Thomas shook his head at the start...and then nodded. "I didn't, not at first. But I went back and looked at the footage. You know that the conspiracy theorist were all over this anyway. The official report said the bullet punched in through the president's side, but the conspiracy theories state that he was either hit in the thigh or not at all. Most men don't die from bullet wounds to the hip...especially in the hours afterwards that it took the Vice President to make the public announcement that Sweet had indeed been killed."

"Alright, Thomas, let's say that I'm going to side with you and your informant on that front. What about evidence about the presence of a foreign toxin in Sweet's system?"

"The whole world saw part of the evidence...and saw _none_ of it when his funeral aired on national television days later—"

"We saw none of it because his casket was closed."

Thomas nodded, happy that his friend had caught on to his own deduction so quickly. "That fact alone had fed the conspiracy theorist that horrible day. They were stating that Adolphus Sweet wasn't even in the casket at all. I believe that he _was_ , but he had suffered through and had been scarred by what I'd watched Mayor Johnson go through at her estate."

"What else?"

"I called the Director of the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta which you and I both know is the first line of defense for this country in any war against infections and disease."

"And what did he say?"

"He said," Thomas paused for a very long time and a cold shiver had replaced the earlier warm one that he'd experienced for the man sitting across him. "He said: _No comment_."

Ernest Lott shot out of his seat like a missile. The senior of the two men scratched the back of his shaven head and had to use his desk for support. The old newspaper man suspected what Thomas Pepper had suspected. "You can't make a 'no comment' on something you don't know about. By saying what he did, the man is admitting that President Adolphus Sweet was indeed poisoned by some foreign agent and that his office knew about it."

"That means the Vice President knew about it as well. If I've read this correctly in my research then only a handful of people in the entire world would have knowledge about this: The Vice President and the Head of the Center for Disease Control in the United States are two, as well as the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI. So far, Deputy Director Rice's people aren't acknowledging my phone calls. It's not about calling me back—they aren't acknowledging that I'm calling at _all_."

Lotto rubbed at his jaw as if he himself had been punched and not Thomas. He got up and closed the blinds of the windows in his office. "I'll get back to Sweet in a moment. Did this source tell you anything else, Thomas? Did you learn who this Caretaker character is or was? What about this so called Whirlwind?"

"I will only disclose to you who the Caretaker is only if I feel the Whirlwind is imminent. The first answer leads directly to the latter."

Lotto sat back down and asked," I can only guess that this source is or was a Pandora Agent?"

"That's what he told me."

"Then why come to you—"

"Because he feels betrayed somehow; I don't know how and I don't know by whom." Thomas took a deep breath; the telling of this tale had taken a lot out of him." Thomas cell phone was on mute, but the light lit up with a brand new text message.

"Anyone woman I know?" Lotto watched him reach into his pants pocket.

_I need to see you, Thomas._ The message said but oddly had not provided a sender. Yet, somewhere in his marrow Thomas Pepper knew who had sent him the text. _Serena Tennyson_. He hoped his intuition was just a theory and he told Lotto the same in a voice he had reserved for delivering tales of disbelief.

Lotto laughed heartily enough to move a mountain. "Serena Tennyson texting you on your phone... don't you Goddamn wish?"

A second later Lotto's office buzzer sounded off. He politely, but sternly reminded his receptionist that he'd asked not to be disturbed unless a race war had broken out in the streets of Atlanta. She apologized, but hung on the line. Her lone response to her boss was that he _really_ wanted to take this call.

Thomas asked, "Any woman I know?"

Lotto frowned at his younger friend but did not comment. Thomas could see him working his brain cells for remembrance of any potential appointment that he could have missed. He cursed aloud in recollection, apologized to the receptionist for his language and then instructed her to put the call through.

"It is some woman you know, actually." He made sure the line was clear of his receptionist probing ears. "This is someone that you would know better than anyone who works in this building actually." He said. "I have the best writer of prose that I have ever had the privilege of editing sitting before me. And yet a younger woman that I'm getting to know as well could possibly top your work, if only she would dedicate herself to it. I have little doubt that she could rival your success, Tommy Boy."

"Bernard Lott," Thomas frowned in anticipation of knowing who the other man was speaking of. "Tell me you didn't—"

"Oh, yes, I did." He said with a grin. "I anticipated you turning down my offer and prepared a preemptive strike to counter it. Sorry, Tommy Boy, remember what I said when I told you that I'm all about business and winning." The phone in front of him beeped and Lott picked up and turned the line on its conference setting as it was positioned when Thomas Pepper first walked in this suite. "Hi Lucy," Lotto said with his eyes burning through Thomas as his own comfort level went down a notch or two. "Say hello to Thomas."

"Hello, Ernest how are you," Lucy said in her South African accident and Thomas could imagine her flashing her overbite as she smiled. "Thomas, I didn't expect to talk to you today darling, what a pleasant surprise."

"Lucy,"

She continued. "Alright, Bernard, enough with the messages already, you know that I've been busy. And you should already know that I want this assignment...under certain conditions, of course."

" _Conditions_ ," Lotto's bushy brow raised with his master plan somewhat in jeopardy. "What conditions are you speaking of?"

"Calm yourself, Bernard, my conditions for taking this assignment are pretty simple and straight forward enough." Lucy replied. The background noise made it sound as if she were driving on the expressway. Thomas hoped she was using her hands free device. "I want total control of the subject matter, darling. We are already in agreement about the material, but I want to drive home with some other concepts you may not have considered. What you have pitched is a wonderful idea under normal circumstances, but considering what our story is up against in Thomas' announcement about his findings causes us to have to dig deeper if we are even to compete for page two."

Lotto looked hopeful again. "I'll take all of that to say that you've uncovered something worthwhile?"

Thomas felt the buzz of his cell before Lucy answered Lotto's question.

_Wrap up your conversation with Lott and me at the Children's Healthcare Center of Atlanta. It was a twenty minute walk from the Times_ , ten minutes if he hurried. And he felt cold again as a second more ominous thought fought past the urgency of the first. _She's knows where_ _you are. Pandora is having you followed...or worse you have some type of tracking device on your person or your car. Let's test that theory by walking down there instead of driving the Jaguar._

Lucy was saying, "Sorry, darling, I had to dig in my wallet to get a couple of dollars out to pay the toll. What I was going to say is that I don't have anything concrete enough to go with it yet. I am close however. And you know how I get when I want something bad enough..."

Thomas wasn't sure her reference was for Lotto or his ears. Her boss said, "Double your efforts, Lucy. I've already purchased time with the local superstation. I want your report to air the same day as Thomas airs his. I'll speak to you again later, Lucy. Good hunting."

"You bet your ass you will, Ernest," Lucy said. "Goodbye, Thomas. I'm still waiting on you to consider the offer I made to you back at the Mayor's estate. Remember, together, we will live forever. " She said and hung up before he had a chance to answer.

Thomas beat his former boss to the question line. "What was all that about?"

"Don't look surprised," Lotto said and lit his cigar again. "I won't play second fiddle to anyone in this city, Tommy Boy, not even to the likes of you. After you present your findings on Pandora, Lucy will hold a press conference shedding some light on one of the other key players in this game."

"Bernard Lott, tell me that you wouldn't have this woman fabricate a story to sell newspapers. I hope I know you better than that."

Lotto stood again so he could dramatize holding his hand of his heart all the better. "You wound me, Tommy Boy...you wound me." And then he leaned over his desk so Thomas would not mistake what he heard from an old newspaper editor in chief himself. "Besides, the truth can be far more devastating and more importantly to me... _newsworthy_ than any lie. I'll let you in on something, Thomas, and I won't make you sign anything to hear it." After Thomas exhaled in exasperation, Lotto said, "I've received several tips that someone directly involved has not been forthcoming with his background. I hear that this has something to do with directly why we are all involved in this crisis in the first place. Lucy's tying up some loose ends right now as we speak. I believe this information to be relevant. I believe that it is pertinent. I believe that the public has the right to know. I'm going with it. And you would be too if you were sitting in my chair instead of the one you're perched in."

This time it was the sound of defeat exhaling through Thomas' nostrils. "Who has Lucy been assigned to do this expose on?" Thomas said. "Whose life is she going to destroy for the sake of increased revenue from advertising ads?"

"None of it won't be necessary, Thomas, if you'll tear up this." Lotto pushed the contract that he'd signed a few minutes ago, back towards Thomas. The younger man simply shook his head. The older woman laid his head back in recliner and puffed triumphantly on his cigar. The smoke making rings around his clean shaven head. Lotto was already counting this year's bonus...which wouldn't fall too far underneath the dollar figure he'd offered Thomas twenty minutes ago.

"The expose will feature the life and times of...Special Agent Christopher Prince, "The Senior Editor of the Atlanta Times said. "I think you've already met his acquaintance."
Xavier

**1224 Red Wine Road, 14** th **Day**

Two members of the Circle sat in Moses Jackson home.

Xavier Prince heard Warren Washington say, "On behalf of Xavier Prince, myself, and the entire House in Chains extended family, I assure you Ms. Jackson, your son Moses, will be found.

It was a bold proclamation. But it was not unlike any Xavier Prince had taught his people to say. _I wonder if Roxanne Sanchez made a similar vow to you, Chris and Denise before she_ _went off and found my niece...very dead_. Grace Edwards had told him this as well two days before. And for a minute he wondered if the liberation of Carver had anything to do with Erica's demise. Grace assured him otherwise. The condition the young woman's body had been found it told examiners that it had been in that dumpster for a week or more. And she wasn't on the Peacekeeper's list.

"Uh-huh," Tracy Jackson mumbled more than said something aloud. She had greeted the two men sitting in her living room and a half dozen more Peacekeepers with a cut off shirt barely hiding her breast and tight jeans. "Marlon, Manning, one of you two get your mamma a beer."

The two boys, no older than nine and ten years old, argued about who was going to the refrigerator _this_ time, until Xavier heard the larger pair of dirty sneakers angling towards the kitchen. Tracy fished a broken Newport out of her breast pocket and turned her focus to the two members of the Circle who sat across the coffee table from her.

"Either of you fancy brothers got a light?"

Warren fumbled around in his pockets while Xavier leaned over the table with his lighter, Tracy meaning to greet him half way.

"Tracy," Felicia, Moses maternal grandmother warned her only daughter. Felicia Jackson was trapped inside of a mostly broken down body but her mind was still sharp...and her tongue had proven sharper since they'd all sat down. "You know you don't smoke in this house or any other where your children are present. Mr. Prince please put your lighter away, it won't be needed."

Tracy's quivering hands caused the cigarette to drop to the floor. She got a mix of a sense of urgency and agitation on her dark face. "Wait just a damned minute," She said. "I don't have to remind you again whose house this is now right, Mamma?"

"Of course not, dear," Felicia Jackson smiled in spite of her child's disrespectful tone. "More importantly, I don't have to remind you that these are your children. And you do not smoke around them, especially your youngest who has asthma anyway."

Tracy decided to give up the fight for another day, circled the long way around the coffee table away from where her mother was seated, and snatched the cigarette and Xavier's lighter in one motion.

"I'll bring this back."

Xavier saw a cloud of blue smoke rise above the younger woman's shoulder before the screened door slammed shut. Xavier hoped she would keep her word because he didn't have a spare lighter on him. He stuck a toothpick in his mouth. Warren shifted his gray eyes, focusing his attention on Tracy's mother. He cleared his throat.

"As I was saying, we've set up dozens of search teams filled with volunteers who are casing the surrounding neighborhoods."

Xavier added, "We've also established safe houses in most of these same neighborhoods. These residences have been equipped with flashing yellow rotating lights that will run 24 hours a day until these children are found. They also have loudspeakers that have been programmed to repeat each of the four missing boys names individually with a message telling them that it safe to enter these homes. When Moses or any of the missing children show, they'll have a safe haven and a friendly face waiting to either call us or bring them home to you themselves."

"Friendly," She said, her smile never wavering underneath too red of lipstick. "Mr. Prince, how many of your people died at Carver?"

Xavier shook himself out of a stupor and pushed the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with the sudden change of subject and the venom for which it was directed at him. She sat back on the worn loveseat, crossed her arms, and awaited his response. Warren sat with his mouth parted open and shifted his eyes back and forth between his leader and Felicia Jackson.

"There were 12 confirmed souls lost." He said evenly. "I visited four area hospitals this morning and seven more of our people are listed anywhere from fair condition to still needing intensive care."

She nodded as if Xavier were only confirming what she already knew as fact. "And the Choir Boy dead have risen well over 75 or 80 last I heard. There are four Carver residents among the dead as well, with countless others still admitted to those same local hospitals you speak of."

Xavier didn't break her gaze...or blink.

"That is correct."

"Was it all worth it, Mr. Prince?"

Warren shifted his long frame in his seat. Xavier continued to hold his gaze. _Considering the hoops we've had to jump with local and national authorities ever since I would almost say no_. But Grace had it handled as she had everything handled. With Admiral Ronald Broward killed in the battle, another man Admiral Ronaldo Darwin, a formal marine in the armed services, fell on his sword for his House. Immediately after Carver had been liberated, he walked into the Atlanta Police Department Headquarters armed only with the black tee shirt, khakis of his Peacekeeper uniform...and an severed Usher's head with him in a plastic bag. The head belonged to a previously 22 year old man—who was the highest ranking Usher and the number three man of the Choir Boys as both The Bishop and his Deacon had escaped them. Darwin put the head on the counter and announced to the second officer who he saw what his own name was, his rank, and that he had authorized this rouge operation out of the knowledge of the Circle or Xavier Prince.

The second officer called for plenty of backup and took notes has fast as she could. She noted the tags that were attached to this... _head_ and that the authorities would find on all of the skulls that had to be taken took down from the electric wires. Darwin, given his Miranda rights and in cuffs now, explained it all to her as slowly as he could manage. _These are forms of ID._ _Do you people think we just go around and kill just anybody we saw? We have matched the Id's, social security numbers, and the warrants that were out on each corpse with 100 percent accuracy._

Xavier had been told that the officers then walked Darwin to the processing area after he finished his statement, careful to step around the first officer who had greeted him...and had passed out from seeing the severed head when he sat it on the officer's desk.

"It was," He finally said in response to Felicia Jackson's question to whether it was worth the lives his side had paid to take Carver back from the Choir Boys. He cleared his throat so she would hear him clearly...echoing the words that he had said in a press conference after Darwin's confession. "The Peacekeeper's cut through all of the bureaucracy and red tape. They alone did what local, state and national authorities failed to do: They eliminated a dangerous threat in our community who poisoned our people with despair and illegal drugs. And although their operation was without my blessing or consent, I applaud it all the same."

Felicia nodded, though she never broke eye contact with him.

"I heard the Bishop escaped you. I also heard that he has HIV if not full blown AIDS."

And it had been the curse of them not acting earlier. Of the 22 women and girls who had been a part of the Bishops' harem, 20 had tested positive for HIV already. That number had been confirmed by Grace from a source she had within the Atlanta Center for Disease Control.

"He has escaped for _now_." Warren squirmed in his seat again. "But his entire support system is gone. Word is that he's been wounded. He got a slash right across the throat. And another rumor has it that the Black Knights and other local gangs are trying to kill him before we find him. They've seen the light of our... _the_ Peacekeeper's commitment to end their illegal activities by whatever hostile actions they deem necessary. The other gangs are putting the blame squarely on his shoulders. No one wants that light to shine on their doings ever again. It's just a matter of time before Bishop's found, just like your Moses."

Xavier heard voices outside. The neighbors had obviously gotten wind of the Circle visiting their community and had gathered around fences and street corners and front yards for a peek at A House of Chains governing body. Percy Harrison had led one of the volunteer groups in a search for the missing boys. Grace Edwards had been outside with the Peacekeepers trying to keep the mob at bay. Xavier was worried about his Third in Command. She seemed really shaken since the news about the women being inflicted by the Bishop's HIV, maybe she knew one of the women personally who had been infected—

"There are so many people out there." Felicia looked past him out of the screened door.

"I apologize for the circus atmosphere, especially now, Ms. Jackson." He looked at Warren. "Why don't you look in on Grace...and perhaps give her a hand."

"I'm sure she's okay."

"Why don't you have a look in on her _anyway_?"

The two men, who couldn't be more at the end of the height spectrum, engaged in a brief stare down that the younger man with the gray eyes seems all too happy to break. He exited the small house following Tracy's path disgusted...and defeated.

Afterwards Xavier found himself counting to ten before saying, "Have I done or said anything to offend you, Ms. Jackson?"

Felicia smiled through her ruby red lipstick again. "That has yet to be seen, Mr. Prince." With some effort she scooted to the edge of the loveseat avoiding springs that were sticking out along the way. "You know, I didn't vote for Senator Lavelle in the Democratic Primaries."

"Excuse me?"

She said, "You know, when he ran for president two years ago...but you were away in jail at that time, I'm sorry. Anyway, I didn't really like Mr. Lavelle all that much anyway; he's just so full of himself and arrogant. Anyway, I also didn't feel that A House in Chains was ready for the type of responsibility it was casting on itself if Lavelle had won the White House. I don't think you people have enough political experience. A House of Chains has become an organization full of style and preamble, but I think you lack _substance_...just one old woman's opinion."

_Yes, you are an old woman full of passion and grit and intelligence_. He could grow to her indeed. "It is unfortunate for my House that Lavelle couldn't garner the support of voters like you, Ms. Jackson. He was narrowly defeated by only a few hundred votes. I respectfully disagree with you on a House in Chains political standing. We were ready to lead. We _are_ leading. A victory for Lavelle would have been victory for all our people, especially in light of the challenges we face now."

She continued to smile but said nothing to that.

_This_...discussion _had been spirited but fruitless_ , he had thought. It was time to bet back on point for his visit to this woman's home in the first place. "Ms. Jackson, if you have any doubts that your grandson will be found alive—"

"I don't have any doubts whatsoever, Mr. Prince." She scooped up a pocket sized Bible off of the coffee table. She held it firmly in her right hand for Xavier to glimpse in case he had not seen one before. "My faith rest in a much higher power than Xavier Prince or your House; and that faith also confirms that I will see Moses again, if not in this life, I will be with him again in the next."

Xavier took his turn at squirming in his seat. He lowered his eyes to the floor and wished for a cigarette of his own. Politics was one thing, but Xavier Prince would not argue someone's spiritualty, especially in their own home.

"Faith," He found himself saying...it was within his realm to question his _own_ spiritualty however. _Why am I admitting any of this you? You are a stranger to me_. "Sometimes I find it difficult to believe."

She'd chastised him for everything thing else...but as he braced himself for the stern lecture he got another round of her smiles instead. "Then, Xavier Prince, I will have to believe for the both of us." She said. She saved her chastising for Tracy's younger boys who were running through the small house again. She let the room regain some semblance of quite again before she spoke. "Share something with me?"

"Of course,"

"Is finding these children more important for their families or for the House in Chains?"

Xavier swallowed hard. He'd lied to Ronald Broward's widow when he told her that although her husband and father to her two children had died honorably, but had partaken in a rogue operation that he had not sanctioned. He listened as Warren stated the same fabrication just a few minutes earlier. Thomas Pepper was not the only man in this town who could utter the truth. He would do so right now.

"Both," he admitted to her. "Getting those children back into the loving arms of their families is my first priority of course...but yes, Ms. Jackson, I need them found as well. I haven't spoken to you about victories since I've been in your home. We earned one with the liberation of Carver. A House in Chains needs one over Pandora. After 411 and Deliverance...and now Rapture in its earliest stages, I need our community to see that we can stand toe to toe and blow for blow in this embattled arena with our enemies. I want People of Color to see that we can protect them from all dangers."

Felicia's smile remained and it seemed to gain a little warmth to it. "You spoke about offending me earlier, Mr. Prince, I want you to know that I never find the truth offensive."

He nodded and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. "May I ask you a question?"

Felicia spread her arms out as far as they would reach. "The floor, as dirty as it may be, is yours."

Xavier stole a quick gander at the screened door to make sure no one was walking it as he spoke. "Why don't you have custody of your grandchildren? Please forgive me for saying this: Your daughter seems... _unstable_ if not vulnerable in her role as a parent."

"To call my Tracy anything but unstable would be a kindness that she does not deserve, Mr. Prince. She is a crack addict." She said emphatically. "To answer your question: I did take temporary custody of my grandchildren until my health failed me over the past 18 or so months."

"I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson."

"No, it is I who should apologize to you. I am another in the line of mothers who have unleashed an ignorant, irresponsible, baby making fool into a Black Community already over burden with them." She went silent for a moment, gathering herself. Xavier thought he saw tears swell in her eyes. After she collected herself she said: "No mother ever wants to believe that her child is capable of doing wrong. I've learned through continuous trial and error to know better."

Xavier crossed the room to where the older woman was sitting and grabbed her wrinkled hands and gave them a gentle squeeze _. If only you could have lived to see this ripe old age_ , _Mother. Oh how I would have treasured our time together_. "It pleases me to see how important family is to you, Ms. Jackson. Generations of stronger families would have eliminated the need for a House in Chains. My father believed that."

Felicia nodded in agreement. "He did at that." She said. "Isaac Prince was a truly great man. We all miss him."

Xavier felt an anger rising up in his chest with a suddenness that he couldn't explain. He let go of the old woman's hands. "You didn't know my father."

"No, I didn't know him personally, of course, but I did follow him." Ms. Jackson twisted around in her seat for Xavier to see a chain link tattooed on the nape of her neck. "I believed in him. I believed in his mandates, I still do. And I trust my instincts when I say that your father would have found another deterrent with dealing with Carver. Did the Circle consider using the Peacekeepers to blockade the projects? After a few months the isolation would have isolated The Choir Boys and starved their ability to make money from the drug trade."

"Yes, we considered many options—"

"I just find it hard to believe that your father would have approved of a full scale assault on lowly drug dealers and thugs when you have a probable conflict with Pandora hovering over the horizon."

Xavier rose abruptly, shook Ms. Jackson's hand and thanked her for her hospitality. He turned for the front door needing some air, not waiting on her to respond. He excused himself but not before he heard the final words she said to him before the screen door closed behind him.

_These other two boys are awakening nearly every night with nightmares about dying in this Whirlwind that Serena Tennyson keeps spewing about_. She had said. _They love their brother;_ _they miss him...but they are more afraid for themselves than they are for him._

He stood outside and let the brushfire smell fill his lungs. He was about damned tired of people doubting his decisions and doubting his ability to get his people through this. Still, Isaac Prince's voice said to him. _Go back in there right now, son_... _and apologize to that woman_. _Remember what you told the Circle about Senator Lavelle's brash behavior._

He opened the screened door, calmed his nerves with some considerable effort, and found Ms. Jackson in the same spot where he had found her. "You have been loyal to my father, to me and to our House. I have disrespected your home and I know he wouldn't have approved of that."

30 minutes later the sun had nearly retired in the western sky and had taken both all the warmth and some of Xavier's faith with it. Worse, the stench of the burning wildfires had become almost unbearable as the smoke seemed to sit on top of this specific spot where he was standing. The crowd had dispersed somewhat because of it, but mostly, he knew, in anticipation of another night of sporadic gunfire that plagued neighborhoods like this one all over Atlanta and urban America. There were little Carvers everywhere.

Grace had found her way to the other side of the Jackson's wooden fence.

"Hi," She said.

"Hey."

She updated him on what she knew about Pandora, the missing children, any and everything that he could possibly need to know. Afterwards they both allowed the silence to breath even if they struggled to.

"Thank you for your words back at Morehouse."

Grace shook her braids and smiled. "There is no need for thanks, Xavier. I told you then...I'm telling you again now, I am here for you. I am here for our House."

Xavier nodded. He needed a cigarette but Tracy Jackson still had his lighter. He wouldn't insult this woman who had been so good to him by asking her for something he knew she wouldn't be carrying on her.

Intelligence was Grace Edwards's business—it was her life. He was sure that she knew his life story as well, the real reason he was so uncomfortable about building true relationships beyond physicality with women. She had to know that his father had left Chris' mother... _abandoned_ her, even after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, for the love and affections of his mom.

And though he had forgiven them both...until both of them were taken from him, he had never allowed himself to become emotionally attached to any woman... _ever_. "I don't think I ever came to terms with relationships in general after I learned about my parent's affair." He said to Grace Edwards aloud as if his previous thoughts had been aloud as well. "It's torn at everything I've believed in about family. My boys are my family. Chris is my family. I have no one else except this House that my father built. It is like whispers in the dark. God, I can't believe that I still struggle to talk about this after all of these years."

She nearly grabbed his arm, thought the better of it. Xavier lowered his head, his heart aching.

"Perhaps we shouldn't talk about this anymore today." She suggested instead.

"My mother broke up a marriage." _There._ He had said it aloud for Grace...and the whole damned world to hear if they already didn't know. "I loved my father. I love my brother, Chris. I loved...yes, I still I believed I loved my mother as well. I honored her memory when I took those lashes for each year she lived on this earth when James Carter desecrated my back with his whip back in school. I just don't think I've been completely able to forgive her for her role in what the two of them did to a dying woman. I don't think I'll ever be able to trust a woman...or myself completely to remain monogamous in any relationship."

_And if I required further proof, then all I needed was to watch what Denise Prince enabled her daughter Erica Lovings almost to do to Chris when she supported her lies._ He needed to see his brother's face again. _But how, what circumstance will allow the time or space for us to pull it off; I can only see an act of God allowing us to._

Grace had regained her resolve...her sense of courage. She ran a finger along his sideburns. "Trust me or not...it doesn't really matter." Grace said and entangled herself in his arms. She was soft and hard all at once. "You are loved nonetheless, Xavier Prince." She said. " _I_ love you, Xavier Prince."

The proclamation stung him so intently that he went cold all over. He had suspected the attraction of course, perhaps even with her smaller frame, he had even desired a physical relationship...but love? He wasn't emotionally prepared to deal with that possibility right now.

"Grace," He said slowly. "I don't think I can—"

She smothered him with kisses to his cheeks, jaws, and chin. It was him who drew her in. She even tried to pull back but he only kissed her harder until she had accepted his full kiss.

He'd fathered two boys and had a multitude of sexual conquest over the years, but had never experienced something this powerful...this _wonderful_ in his entire life.

He felt warm inside.

He felt hard outside.

He felt a... _buzzing_...

"Sorry," Grace said and looked at her smart phone, which had been set to silent and buzzed when they were close. "Pepper's on the move. I have people following him, but there is something that I want to see for myself."

In an instant she'd transferred from a vulnerable woman melting in his arms to Grace Edwards, the Number Three member of the Circle who was the Chief Intelligence Officer with duty calling her.

"I'll call you later," She said as a way of departing.

The night turned out clear and the sky was plentiful with stars. For a moment...a small moment maybe, he felt his hope renewing. If Xavier Prince can experience what the earliest feelings of true love is, then all things are truly possible.

He laughed out loud.

Serena Tennyson herself could magically appear inside of this fence and not spoil this moment. He picked out one of his cigarettes and began his slow, methodical, familiar routine of lighting it when he realizes...that he still doesn't have his lighter.

Someone cast a small shadow behind him. For a minute he had hoped that Grace Edwards had changed her mind, leaving duty to someone else, but he knew that thought was ludicrous as soon as it jumped off a brain stem. Yet, he was far from alarmed not knowing who is there. The Peacekeepers had every corner within a five mile radius covered and no one would approach him without their knowledge or consent.

Even this crack head named Tracy Jackson who now stood in front of him when he turned around.

"Your lighter," She handed it to him.

Xavier decided she was just in time. As he went to light his Newport, the flame gave him a clear look into the woman's eyes across from him. Her pupils had fully diluted. She was perspiring heavily. She was pacing in place. Xavier knew that she was now high as a firecracker. He wanted to chastise her. He wanted to have sympathy for her. How anyone already cursed with her condition could not be more stressed, when one of her children had been kidnapped and the fact existed that he could possibly be dead...

He remembered how his own mother stressed about a child that wasn't biologically hers when Chris disappeared without a trace over those fateful months.

Seeing Tracy Jackson at her worst caused Xavier to lose the taste for his own addiction; He handed her the remainder of his pack and gave the lighter back to her. "Keep these, Tracy." Xavier said. "If there is anything else that I can do to help ease your pain; could I offer you any money?"

Tracy shook her head, almost uncontrollably. "I'm not a beggar." She said, but when she got a peek at the stash of hundred dollar bills in his possession she switched her head into the nodding mode real fast. "Yea, I could use a few bucks." Xavier handed her two bills...and instantly regretted it. He should have given the cash to Felicia instead. "Yea, I still have two other boys left. I'm just not a beggar."

"I know that," Xavier smiled, but he felt his smile...all of his good feeling evaporating away as Tracy went to her knees and attempted to unzip his slacks. "Stop it, Tracy, What in the hell are you doing?" And when she gave it one more effort he pushed her head away. " _I said_ _what in the hell are you doing_?"

From her knees, Tracy Jackson stopped long enough to gaze up at Xavier as if he were the one stupefied. "I said I'm not a beggar. I pay my debts. You gave me money and cigarettes and nice lighter. I'm gonna pay my debts by giving you a blow job like you've never had before, a damned good one."

Xavier Prince backed away from her...all the way until he had somehow unlatched the wooden fence. He turned and four Peacekeepers hurried to match his pace getting the hell out of that neighborhood.

His special moment was ruined after all.
Thomas

**Children's Healthcare Center of Atlanta; SE Atlanta, 14** th **Day**

Who in the hell is Helen Shatner? And how is she involved in this.

That was the name that Serena Tennyson had texted to him to ask for when he reached the Children's Healthcare Center of Atlanta. An underling whose breath was of spearmint smiled and paged the woman; Five minutes later Thomas Pepper watched as the Duty Nurse, Helen Sutter greeted him. She was at least 10 years younger than he was. She was wearing her hair in ponytails. She wasn't cute enough to wear her hair in ponytails.

"Good evening, Trisha told me that would be coming, Mr. Donovan. Would you mind following me?"

"Donovan?"

"You are Arnold Donovan, Trisha's friend. She described you to a tee and told me you would be visiting the newborns with her tonight."

"Ah... _Trisha_ did that. Yes, Nurse Sutter, lead me to _Trisha_. I'm dying to see her again."

One alcohol scented room over Nurse Shutter and Thomas—AKA Arnold Donovan had found himself in the baby wing of the care center.

And Serena Tennyson, wearing a trench coat, was standing with her forehead of the glass looking in on the newborns.

"Trisha, how have you been girl?" Serena smiled at the other woman, but before she could mouth an answer Helen said: "I found your friend up at the front desk. This is the newspaper writer that you've been telling me about for months aren't it?"

Thomas said: "You two know each other on a personal level? And...Helen, do you know any of my work?"

"Of course Helen and I know each other, honey." Serena squeezed his hand and pulled him next to her. "We know each other as much as my weekly visits to see the newborns right, Helen?"

Helen nodded her ponytails moving. "Right...Mr. Donovan, you don't think we just let anybody back here do you?"

"And not everybody in the world knows who Arnold Donovan the famous beat writer of the Atlanta Falcons football squad is honey, I hope you don't feel insulted?"

"Of course not...sweetheart," Thomas replied, playing her game.

Helen, the Duty Nurse shook Thomas hand and smiled her not so cute smile at him. "It's good to finally have met you, Arnold. Trisha talks about you all the time."

_Has she really?_ "That's so sweet of you, Trisha."

The newborns were kept behind a heavy sheet of glass. The room was lowly lit on their side in heavy contrast to this side of the glass. Two couples were near enough for Thomas to hear their muttered conversations. The room was frigid. He buttoned up his coat and was glad that he'd worn it inside this building.

He caught Serena's reflection in the glass. She wore a shoulder length black wig and blue contact lenses to mask her appearance. Thomas noticed something else: She looked fatigued, especially the dark circles developing under her eyes. Her normally flawless posture was affected as well as she was slumped over just the slightest bit. It was something that his journalistic perceptions had aided in him in seeing.

Duty had called Helen away and she waved her goodbyes at the couple.

Thomas gave 'Trisha' a hard stare. "You're putting these children's lives in danger by being here."

"These children are as safe as you allow them to be, Thomas. Do nothing foolish or hostile and they will be fine."

"Me? What kind of double talk is this, Serena? You asked for me to come here remember?"

"I did, but you are the one who is being followed." Serena stole a quick glance at the couples...and then fixed her gaze on Thomas. "I needed to see you. I wanted to see you, but I could not compromise my safety or my mission."

"You say that I'm being followed. Who am I being followed by...the FBI? Is it a House in Chains?"

"Both." She took a deep breath. Her phony blue eyes did not take away from her normally intense gape. "I know that you won't believe me, but I'm glad to see that you are well."

Thomas frowned. "You can't seriously expect me to believe that can you?" He asked her. "I could have been killed at my townhouse, for God's sake. You used me Serena, Goddamn you. You used me to advance Pandora's cause."

"I did." She nodded. "Using you doesn't automatically mean that I wanted to see you come to harm." Serena glanced away. "Or does it mean that I meant harm to those that you were close to."

"I don't want to hear this."

"The murder of your housekeeper was unfortunate but necessary."

" _Unfortunate_ ,"

"Yes, unfortunate," Serena managed her tone. "Thomas, we sit at the doorstep of an extraordinary moment in race relations in the history of this country. Every generation has had their time to step up or be trampled: The abolishment of slavery and the Civil War that came of it; The Civil Rights Movement; The election of the first Black President, Adolphus Sweet."

"I hope that you don't call the 411 attacks and the loss of life that it caused as part of an extraordinary event in history?"

"Much of the advancement of People of Color has come at a high price. Each passing generation has suffered less racial strife as a direct result of what has occurred to their ancestors before them. If Pandora succeeds...If _I_ can fulfill the Caretaker's vision, then future generations will be spared the pain of what the people of this time must see to its end."

Thomas swallowed bile. One couple had moved on, but two others had taken their place. "I've gathered enough evidence to go public with the knowledge that President Sweet was not killed by a sniper's bullet—"

"But that he was poisoned in a similar fashion to Mayor Ernestine Johnson on 411"

Thomas laughed heartily, the couples noticed him...but he knew nothing else to do. "You're still using me, even now, Serena. Why should I believe that any of this information from this so called source of mine is real—"

"Because he is real, Thomas," Serena gave the room a slow once over. "I turned the source on to you. When you hear from him again he will tell you that he works in biogenetics lab in Houston, Texas. He will tell you that Mayor Johnson, not President Sweet was the initial target of this poisoning. But after the president was shot his symptoms were turned on, for the lack of better terminology, to see how effective the virus actually was."

"I don't understand, Serena. What is going on?"

"More than you imagine, Thomas." She said. "You're getting the facts as fast as I can get them to you."

"So what do you want from me now?"

"What I want, and have wanted since before 411 launched are for Xavier Prince and the Circle to surrender. I want to see a House in Chains and Pandora disbanded. I left the door open for these very happenings back at your townhouse remember? I was willing to sacrifice myself when I surrendered to the authorities?"

"Here you go with more double talk, Serena." Thomas said through clenched teeth. He was angry. But he knew that he was putting every life in this building in danger if these strangers were alerted to who he and his blue eyed acquaintance truly were. "You had Deliverance already planned before you surrendered yourself to the FBI."

She nodded. "Of course I did, Thomas. But the operation was not to have taken place until after the FBI took me back to Quantico in Virginia. Pandora had always prepared itself to extract me from either location. Two things happened that changed that location to Atlanta: Xavier Prince and his brood did not surrender themselves as we asked—"

"And you being nearly raped at the holding station by those two men frightened you enough that you couldn't wait any longer."

Serena nodded her brunette head...and looked visibly shaken.

Thomas turned his attention to the babies on the other side of the glass and couldn't help but smile at their innocence. At last the other two couples had trailed off and he and Serena were alone. He wanted some answers. He _deserved_ some answers.

"Are you responsible for the recent kidnappings of Black Children in this city?"

"Yes," She admitted with little hesitation. "And answering your next question before it forms in your mouth is: Yes, we masterminded the majority of the first wave of kidnapping and subsequent killings that occurred during the first half of the 1980's as many historians and people like you in the media have suspected."

He felt his knees knocking...and not from the cold. Thomas Pepper, more than ever, wondered if he would live long enough to tell what he knew to the world. "This Louis Keaton," He said. "He is the one doing these kidnappings."

Serena nodded again. "Special Agent Christopher Prince, Nicholas Sheridan and all the others in this investigation will piece the entire puzzle together sooner or later. Perhaps they know all of the answers right now." She admitted. "But unless they find these missing children, which I assure you they will not, it will eventually force Xavier Prince to engage in a full scale war with Pandora. That would be a move that would be very unwise on his part. This is a war that he cannot win. And I have no wish to see more bloodshed."

Thomas continued to look through the glass. "You said that you needed to see me, Serena." He found her reflection in the glass and confirmed the desire in her eyes. "What has happened to you since we last saw one another? I know about the attempted sexual assault...but something else is troubling you."

"I am not the unfeeling woman you think I am, Thomas."

"I don't know _who_ you are, Serena." He faced her. "Are you the woman who would order innocent people killed and follow that with another order to have children kidnapped in the name of furthering this Caretaker's cause? Or are you the woman who could be heard crying long hours from her cell after being nearly raped by two Black policemen who let their grief of a fallen friend overwhelm them into such a devious undertaking?"

She wrinkled her nose at what he had said.

"Oh yes, Serena, I have my sources as well." He bit back a smile. "But you haven't answered my question, who are you really?"

Serena shrugged. "I can justify everything I've done so far. I've seen it all in the—"

"In your flames," He interrupted her. "Everything in your world revolves around this belief system with your Dragon."

"It would be unwise of you to mock my faith, Thomas." Serena's tone warned him that he would be unwise to ignore her words. "I use what I see materialize in the Dragon's flames to guide me in every decision I make. What do you use to guide yours?"

"Truth," He replied just as quickly. "I'm not interested in taking sides here in this cold war between Pandora and a House in Chains. I'm only interested in keeping my word to Mayor Ernestine Johnson and telling the truth about what I discover. And furthermore, I'm going to tell this truth to the world about what I've learned and will learn, Serena, unless you plan to have your people kill me. Or perhaps you will kill me yourself?"

"I guess we'll have to see, Thomas," She said evenly. "We'll both do what we must."

Their conversation had drawn a few curious glances from both staff and parents walking it and out of this area. Thomas took a deep breath and now realized that his voice had must have risen well beyond a conversational tone. Endangering these people's lives was the last thing he had intended to do.

"I guess we need to go. Is there anything else, Serena?" he asked. "You wanted to know what I knew. You wanted to know where I stood with my investigation...but I still feel that you wanted something more. What did you really call me here for?"

She told him that she called him here because she thought he was the lone person outside of her organization that she could talk to. She told him that she could show her real face to him.

"I flew to Memphis yesterday."

Thomas frowned at that proclamation. Pandora must have had its own private jets. It was no way this woman was getting through security checks in any international airports in this country.

"Memphis," He searched his memory banks and found a record. "Memphis, Tennessee is Louis Keaton's hometown."

"Yes," She nodded, impressed that with his knowledge of her operative. "I saw his mother, a woman named Lisa Healy in the flames."

Thomas pulse thickened in his ears. "Did you kill this woman?"

_Are those real tears in your phony blue eyes, Serena_? "That was my intention, yes, Thomas. After I had questioned her about whether her brother Templeton still lived and his whereabouts I was going to do just that for her crimes of... _neglect_ of her son, Louis Keaton." Serena gave Thomas a brief synopsis of what circumstances led to the continued sexual assaults of the boy Keaton by his uncle. The story twisted knots in Thomas' belly. "I made her strip down after I had the information I wanted. I intended for her to die with as much indignity that her own son had been forced to endure when he was repeatedly raped by the monster that was her brother." Serena folded her arms, fighting against the cold. "And yet, I was shown something that I won't soon forget, so I was compelled to spare her."

Thomas itched under his collar to learn what that information was, but didn't want to bite off more than he could chew. So he asked her this instead: "Lisa Healy's brother wasn't dead was he? He would have been a very old man by now."

Serena shook her head...and then nodded a yes at his second question. "He was very old, very feeble. He gets around in a wheelchair." She said carefully. And then the shadow of the woman who he found sitting in his living room returned in all of her glory. "However, my justice has no statute of limitations."

" _He was old and defenseless, Serena_." Goddamn you, Thomas, you have to get your tone under control. "Tell me you didn't do this."

Serena pulled her hands out of the trench coats pockets for the first in minutes. Curious; and there, he saw it for the first time since they'd come in this hallway. There was dried, bruised blood underneath her fingernails. There were two scratches on her wrist and that ran half way up her arms. Were these the last ditch efforts of Templeton Healy's attempts at saving himself?

"I did." And Serena looked as if she relived the entire episode of the man's final moment's right here, right now, where all of this new life was as its beginnings. "I looked into his gray, lifeless eyes, ran my fingers through his liver spotted scalp...and avenged Louis Keaton."

Thomas stomach turned. "Why should I believe any of this?"

She leaned forward and dropped something with weight into his coat's pocket and whispered in his ear. "If you doubt my work then you really don't know me at all." She began to back pedal away from him. "I advise you to retreat to the rear of this building. It's the only way that you'll escape both a House in Chains and FBI Agents who are following you. I left another package for you back there on the floor near the exit door that you won't be able to miss."

Serena looked as if her eyes were full of tears, but as she became one with the shadows it became entirely impossible for Thomas Pepper to be absolutely sure. "We'll speak in person again, Thomas."

"Serena... _Serena_ ," He called out to her. "Where are you going?"

"We'll speak again...before the end...before the Whirlwind is unleashed upon the world." She promised.

" _Serena_ ,"

He had awakened three babies with his yelling. One woman told him to be quiet. But it was too late for all of that now. And he needed to know something from Serena...before she left him behind for good.

"Have you seen _me_ in your flames?"

Serena stopped her retreat only long enough to say: "We are all given to the flames eventually, Thomas, even I will be someday." She said and disappeared out of the side door that led to...he had no idea where the door led.

Several babies were crying in earnest. More than a few onlookers were giving him a wide berth as he followed Serena's advice and angled towards a rear outlet. Nurse Helen had returned to question him. The frown on her face hadn't improved her overall looks any. Whatever Serena had dropped in his pockets was rattling around and was weighing him down some, but he dared not stop and look to see what it was right now. He heard one of Helen's assistants say to her that maybe they should summon security.

He walked...and finally ran out of the first door that he could find. He heard Helen yell at the others to let him go, not to worry about, at least the creep was leaving.

Thomas found a sign above a door that said, "Exit to back entrance and parking area."

There was something wrapped up in a knapsack on the floor next to the door.

Thomas scooped it up, took one last long look behind him and ducked through the door. He found himself standing next to a dumpster once he was outside...but the dumpster wasn't where the worst of the odors was fumigating from.

He walked a little further down the alley to make sure that no one was tracing his steps. When he felt he was clear he sat the package down and reached into his left pocket first. Ouch. Whatever it had been it cut him.

He pulled out a man's seared hand.

He threw it down in disgust. He was breathing hard by then. The man's sharp fingernail is what had cut into his own skin. It took a moment for Thomas to gather himself and reached in his other pocket.

He pulled out a man's burned foot this time.

He bit down into his lip and tossed the foot in the general location of where he had thrown the hand on the ground. He tried to breathe in deeply and control over his emotions. He still had one item left to investigate, and memory served him that it was the heaviest of the items that Serena wanted him to see.

He squatted down and carefully...methodically untied the knapsack.

And Templeton Daley's head darkened head rolled out onto the pavement.

Thomas Pepper lost his dinner of sautéed lamb chops and green beans. He cried tears of desperation and disgust. And just as suddenly...fatigue rushed upon him and pushed down on his big shoulders and sat his big frame and a thousand dollar suit in the muck and the grime in this alley. And he knew that Serena Tennyson had provided him with all of the proof that he needed of her exploits in Memphis.

He looked out at Templeton's severed head...and the head seemed to look up at him and some of his curiosity peeked through the holes where the disgust and desperation in his heart and soul existed only moments before.

_You bastard, Templeton_... _you poor, miserable bastard_ ; he thought, which torture did Serena impose on you first, was it the cutting or the burning? And then his mind questioned _: And why did she burn you at all? Somehow I don't believe that given you to her flames is enough of an answer? What else did Keaton tell her that you did to him to deserve to be burned alive?_
Chapter Eleven

Someone other than Muhammad Clark participated in a number of the killings that have come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. Anyone on this panel who draws any other conclusion is displaying not only short sidedness they are being irresponsible and reckless.

-An Independent Tribunal report to the Atlanta Police Department Task Force in 1993.
Chris

**Handcock State Prison; Sparta, Georgia, 15** th **Day**

He had received two phone calls not one minute apart just prior to knocking on Angel's motel room door.

The first came from his ex-wife Denise. He said into his phone's speaker that he understood her need to see him but that would be impossible today. He knocked on Angel's door between bouts of conversation with his ex-wife. Angel unbolted the lock after his third knock and looked as if he'd awaken her from a nap. She had fallen asleep fully dressed in a white blouse and black jeans. She invited him into her room, the hotel rooms just outside of Hancock State Prison in Sparta, Georgia. After he hung up with Denise Angel cocked a brow and asked if he planned to respond more favorably to her request when they drove back to Atlanta tomorrow morning.

He probably surprised her a little by saying that he she sounded so desperate that he'd given her directions down here the last time he talked to her. Denise telling him that she'd get a friend to drive her down if she came at all; Angel had filled her mouth with mints before admitting Christopher to mask the smell of liquor. It wasn't working. She was out of sight of Agent Sheridan at the moment and she must have felt the need to take advantage of that fact while she still could.

In speaking of Sheridan...he had been Chris' second call. He wanted to remind both of them that they needed to track their steps from this point out. Public sentiment was lodging against the bureau, especially from People of Color. Any misstep and this country risked looking at a full scale racial episode of the likes that it had never seen before.

After he had hung up with his boss Angel said: "Well, you shouldn't be surprised, Christopher. Your boss is a bureaucrat. He is a bureaucrat with a nice ass, but one nonetheless." She said. "How we go about solving these disappearances is as important as bringing the children home safely." And he felt another question rising from her out of the room's silence. "But there was more to your conversation than just that wasn't it?"

Chris shifted his weight. "Some of Sheridan's superiors want you off the case, Angel." He said. "He's going to bat for you and so is the deputy director. They've been impressed with your showings especially at those makeshift crime scenes we discovered back home."

"You know me, Christopher," Angel raised her legs and put them on the wall. "I live to impress."

"This is serious, Doc."

She sat up abruptly. "I know that it is, Christopher." She glanced at the clock sitting on her nightstand. "We can talk on the way. We need to get going."

Once they were signed in and admitted to Hancock Prison, a correction's officer who was a dark cloud on a sun shiny day waved them into the social contact area. This wing had ten cafeteria tables lined up in relative close quarters in the room. It reminded him of his grade school days long ago...even before Keaton had taken him and changed his life forever.

Chris counted at least a dozen armed officers ready to spring into action at a moment's notice. A Black officer, whose eyes watered as if he needed to carry a tissue box everywhere he went, mentioned to Chris that they'd added extra security measures after what happened over at Calhoun State Prison last month. He also told Chris that the chief hesitated to hand him a clearance after he learned that he and Xavier were siblings. It had finally took a stern phone call from Sheridan warning that any interruption of a federal investigation could result in an review of this facility from state auditors whose phone number Sheridan had on speed dial.

Muhammad Clark was brought out in wrist and ankle irons a short time later; Chris heard Angel mumble something along the lines of bureau membership having its privileges.

Muhammad Clark:

He was a fair skinned Black man with a fat head, big eyes and a bushel of uncombed gray hair on his head that was going white. He had dozens upon dozens of moles on his face, two dozen rotten teeth in his mouth and one whitish goatee wrapped around his lips.

"Special Agent Christopher Prince...Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree, now what do I owe the pleasure of your visit _this_ time?" He took a long time to sit down in his irons. "Or should I guess? Well, I'll save you both a little time and tell you that I am clueless to the present or future plans of Pandora or their pet Louis Keaton."

Angel cocked a brow. "And I'm sure that you will continue to deny ever being in collaboration with either one of those parties of course."

Clark poked his lips out from his goatee and shook his fat head, both in an exaggerated manner. "Look, pretty lady, when a man lives long enough to be as old as I am, you learn that consistency of your tongue is sometimes all you have left."

Chris planted his elbows—his flag on the cafeteria table. He was up against a strong wind with so many tempests working against him. "Let's get something straight here from the start, Mr. Clark...we haven't traveled this far to play fucking games with you."

Angel said, "We _are_ interested in any insights you are willing to offer us about Keaton's mindset or his whereabouts."

Clark swallowed half a bottle of the bottled water that had been provided for him and wiped what had spilled with his long blue sleeves. "I've been thinking about just that sort of thing since these fine folks told me you two were coming." He said. "I also thought about what I could gain by aiding you in your precious investigation."

Chris stood up. "Let's go, Doctor. We're finished here."

As he spun to go Angel clasped on to his wrist and stroked it with part affection, part urgency. When he began to descend back into his seat Angel said to prisoner: "We're not in the position to guarantee you anything, Mr. Clark." She said.

"What _do_ either of you chipmunks have the power to request on my behalf in return for my help?"

Angel looked at Chris for guidance. "I'm sure we could find something...right, Christopher?"

Chris didn't look at his friend. He said to Clark: "What could we possibly offer you, Clark?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Your family stopped calling you on any regular basis ten years ago. You can't go out into the yard, especially now, without fear of being attacked by other members of the prison population. Men can tolerate being locked up with other murderers, drug dealers and thieves, but nobody wants to pal around with a child molester."

Angel hesitated, but eventually nodded at Chris reasoning. "Agent Prince is right, Muhammad." She said. "Your isolation is the only thing that has kept you alive in here this long."

Muhammad Clark leaned over the cafeteria table far enough to draw one of the guards attention. "And you would love to see that happen wouldn't you, Agent Prince." Clark wisely sat back and relaxed as much as his restraints would allow him. "I've bet you've had wet dreams of waking up one sun shiny morning, picking up the _Constitution_ or the _Times_ and reading the headline in big bold print saying that I'd been butchered in here."

"Yea," Chris surprised himself by saying. "I sure as hell would. You and every other man like you in this country."

Angel soothed his wrist again. Such a proclamation from someone who valued life as much as Christopher Prince sounded alien, even coming from his own mouth.

"That would be..." Angel searched the ceiling for the word she was looking for. "That would be _unfortunate_ , Muhammad, especially considering your innocence."

" _What_?" Chris and Clark asked at the same time.

Angel repeated herself since they hadn't heard her clearly the first time around. "Muhammad, you have always declared and maintained your innocence for most of the murders that you were convicted of."

"She's good," Clark pointed a crooked finger in Angel's general direction. "You boys at the bureau should consider employing her services full time."

Angel said: "Shut up, Muhammad." She gave Chris a quick glance as if she were asking for his approval to press forward with whatever she was doing. He had no idea. "I've always theorized that you were responsible for a handful of murders but no more than that. Yet, your profile, your patterns of behavior weren't consistent enough to have been responsible for the dozens of other abductions and killings that you were indicted for."

Clark showed the first signs of discomfort with the conversation. He folded his arms and exhaled out of this nose. "And yet, I was convicted for all of those kidnappings they charged me with anyway."

"Is this supposed to make a hell of a lot of difference to the families of those young men you raped and killed?" Chris asked.

Clark replied by pointing his thumb at his own chest. "It makes a difference to _me_."

Chris and Muhammad Clark engaged in an intense stare down that was finally broken when both men heard Angel sifting through a handful of photos she'd sat on the cafeteria table.

"Do you recognize either of these locations?" She asked. "And don't blurt out an answer, Muhammad. Think about it a second."

Clark took the doctor's advice. He actually studied the photos for a number of minutes, his bushy gray brows curled in concentration while he searched his memory for answers. "No," He finally said. "After I killed the boys I'm responsible for I did what the papers said that I did. I tossed their remains in the Chattahoochee River where I thought they would go undiscovered. I didn't leave anything behind on land. And I can't recall being at either of these locations."

Chris laughed out loud. "And just like that we're supposed to believe you?"

"You damned well better if you and your people have any shot whatsoever of finding those four boys that have gone missing in the past few days now." Clark leaned over the table again, his chains betraying his movements and garnering the unwanted attention of three corrections officers this time. "I've never lied about this. I've never have lied about the hand full of...young men that I abused and killed. Why should I start now? You said it yourself earlier, Agent Prince, what do I possibly have to gain at this point?"

"Nothing," Chris heard Angel saying to him more than to the man who had uttered the words. "You have nothing at all to gain from lying."

Chris shot her a warning glance: "Doctor..."

"Christopher, for 30 years people in both our professions have either been asking the wrong questions about the Atlanta Child Murders or ignoring the right answers."

"So what is this right answer you are looking for?"

Angel almost seemed to ignore Chris altogether and she focused all of her attention to the other man sitting at this table with her. "Some of us have questioned whether you were working under the guidance of Pandora as we've learned Keaton was. Were you working for them...or a man who called himself the Caretaker? Or did these people draw their inspiration _from_ you?"

"I was sick." Clark said as a response. "I am _still_ sick, Doctor. I have never denied that either. To answer your question, pretty lady, I don't know whether they were inspired by what I did or not. I just know that it pissed me off real good though. Things were going just fine and dandy for me until Chris here and those younger boys went missing. Nobody had given a damn about those retarded older teenagers I was picking off the streets of Atlanta."

Chris watched the older man gather himself.

"I just know that I've never met this Caretaker or anyone else associated with those racist bastards in Pandora. I also never met nor was it my intention to compete with Louis Keaton for victims." Muhammad Clark stood to his full impressive height. "But most importantly, in light of all the evidence that had presented itself over the years, I want a new trial. I refuse to die in this place with the world thinking I killed all 19 children for which I was wrongly and conveniently convicted."

Chris sprung from his seat as well. "Someone had to pay the price, Clark." Chris spat. "You just admitted that you are far from innocent here."

"I didn't molest those little boys; 12 year olds didn't harden the rocks for me." He snatched Chris arm with unbelievable strength and speed and pulled him close enough for the special agent to count the convict's teeth tooth by rotten tooth. "But it's not a day that goes by that I don't envy Louis Keaton. Number one, he is still on the street to this day getting his groove on." The corrections officers rush to untangle Chris from the other man's grip. "Secondly, and most importantly, I wish I had Keaton's taste in boys...because I would have loved to spend some quality time with you, Christopher Prince."

Chris escaped the other man's grip. Half dozen officers have sprinted in their direction, but they wouldn't arrive in time to save Muhammad Clark for what would come next.

Chris hopped across the table and dove on top of the chained prisoner driving him to the concrete floor. He then pounded Clark in his face with all of the strength that he could muster and drove his face first onto that same floor. Chris had his hands on Clark's throat for a count of ten or 12 before the guards tackled him, knocking him off. Even so, Chris managed one kick at Clark and when it connected it drew blood from the other's mouth which had split open.

He could hear Angel...barely hear her over the ruckus of humanity...pleading with the guards to release their hold on him, while several more guards jumped on Clark adding new bruises to the ones that Chris had already administered. More legions of guards entered the space and had their weapons drawn, careful not to aim them at other visiting civilians.

In ten more minutes it was all over.

As four men drug Muhammad Clark back to the cage from which he came, Chris could hear him shouting: " _This doesn't change how I feel you bastards. I only killed three or four of_ _those boys. I had nothing to do with the rest. I had nothing to do with those other murders I say_."

And then he heard the old man laughing...at him a long time after he could no longer see him.

" _Oh yes, I envy Keaton though...oh how I know I would have enjoyed quite a time with yooooooooooooo...Chris."_
Roxanne

**State Road 15, Four Miles past White Plains, Georgia, 15** th **Day**

Someone was following them on this stretch of highway.

Roxanne Sanchez licked at the lip gloss on her lips, unlatched the safety off of her Nine, adjusted both of her rear view mirrors, and punched her heel onto the gas pedal. She felt the coldest shiver of fear wash over her shoulder blades but dismissed the emotion just as quickly. _Fear is irrelevant, Senorita_ , Victor had whispered in her ear once between kisses. _It is how you_ _function despite that fear that matters when it is time to conquer the night_. Tonight she decided somewhere outside White Plains, Georgia, was no different than any other night of her life thus far. Either she would succeed or she would not.

Either she would die tonight or she would not.

Roxanne had seen the big black Cadillac swoop out and latch on to their rear like a hungry predator tailing its prey about 45 miles and 30 minutes ago.

State Road 15 was a lonely road, with a minimum amount of traffic, especially this late in the evening. Whoever was driving that car...rather it was a Pandora Operative, a FBI Agent, or even her old lover Victor Castillo, wasn't interested in disguising his intentions. The moonlight, the headlights from the few other vehicles they were passing and the Macon skyline in the distance provided all of the light she was getting. This was an ideal place for an ambush.

She hadn't told her passenger—Joseph Champion much. He was still marinating in his good feelings that he had gotten out of Carver and the city of Atlanta for a while. He'd been an emotional wreck, sliding from one passionate extreme to another, babbling on and on about his dead wife one minute while biting his nails...to counting how many mistakes he'd made during another.

One mistake he hadn't made was when he showed her a picture of Angel's husband, Seth Dupree, a doctor in his own right. He was a renowned surgeon. He was in Atlanta working alongside the medical staff of Atlanta General with their Emergency Triage Unit. _I need to test a_ _theory_. She threw her Honda onto a side road for two reasons: Roxanne would pull to the side of the road and let Champion have yet another smoke. He had to have a cigarette about every 20 minutes anyway. _Men and their vices_ , she thought. But more importantly, she wanted to see once and for all, if the bid black Caddy would follow where she led. She knew the area. That was a bonus. She pulled into a neighborhood gas station, made a quick circle back and put on the breaks.

After Champion filled his lungs and got back into the car he asked: "Did you hear me, Roxanne?" Champion turned down the radio. Their taste in music differed as well, which was no surprise to her. "Where are we? You said we were getting out of the city for a few hours to let the tension die down. It looks more to me that you know exactly where we're going. Where are you taking me?"

She suppressed a grin. Champion was no fool after all. She might as well let the cat out of the bag and throw it out of the window and see if it landed on its feet. She was tiring of this man's company, his vices and his old cologne that he wore anyhow.

"I spoke to Christopher Prince before sundown. He has business down state not too far from here." She stole a glance out of the side view mirror and saw the Cadillac still there, though it was maintaining a two car length distance for now. It gave her a moment to measure Champion's response to her next bit of news. "Dr. Hicks-Dupree is with him. You two have some unfinished business I believe."

Champion's bushy brows rose and he wiped his goatee with the back of his hand. He squirmed in his seat as if he'd picked up some red ants when he had got out the last time he smoked. "What's the matter, Roxanne? I don't get why you are doing this? I took you to Erica Loving's body like I said that I would." He looked out the passenger side window in concentration, a wrinkle forming in his forehead as he worked out what he would say...or do next. "You don't believe that someone in the Choir Boys killed her do you?"

The Cadillac fell back to three car lengths behind now...teasing her. She didn't have long now before the attack came. "Maybe one of them did kill her, Champion. The murder was an act of rage, an act of contempt." She said and gripped the steering wheel tightly with her left hand placing her free hand on her Nine with the other. She faced danger both in and outside of this Honda. She prepared to defend herself against which ever snake struck first. "What I am saying is that the timing of everything that went down was far too convenient for my taste. I told you this back at Carver. I'm telling you this again tonight."

Champion was distracted by the Honda gaining speed. He bit his fingernails. "And you don't believe in conveniences?"

"No, I don't."

"And I guess you don't believe what I told you about what happened to me or my wife either?"

"I believe what happened to your wife clouds your perception of things, Champion. I don't know Serena Tennyson. I don't want to know her, but I know the type. People in her position like to use human emotions to manipulate the people that work with them into serving whatever desires they want from them."

"No, Shit, Roxanne," Champion slapped himself on the forehead to complete his exaggerated exchange with her. "It's no way that I would have thought of that alone without—hey, we've driven pass this point before."

"We're being followed. We've been followed for about the past hour." She punched the gas and the Honda's engine moaned in complaint. Something inside Champion made him check to see that his seatbelt was secured. He glanced over his left shoulder to verify to himself what Roxanne had disclosed with him.

"You believe that the black Cadillac is following us, Roxanne...you sure about this? That's almost too much of a cliché for me to die of."

Roxanne ignored his jape and concentrated on her steering. "Back at Carver, you were telling me about the last night you spent with Dr. Hicks-Dupree." For all of her concentration, Roxanne nearly took the curve too fast, a car traveling in the opposite direction laid on his horn in a long honk of complaint. "What does she know about what is going on in Atlanta right now that you aren't telling me?"

"I don't know what you mean." Champion clutched the dash for support." Why are you asking me this now?"

Roxanne told him her theories about the three parties that were potentially behind the wheel of the car making up ground behind them. "I've had too many close calls with eternity lately, Champion. If I'm going to die on this lonely road tonight, I expect to hear the truth from you why. I want it _all_ and I want it right now."

"Angel and I spent the night...talking when we weren't having sex and drinking. I hinted to her that I wanted to turn myself into the authorities. But we had another visitor in the middle of the night, a man named Eugene Cover had come from my old stomping grounds in Houston looking for me."

"Cover," Roxanne fired the accelerator up as she sped the Honda around two slow moving cars and slipped back into the correct lane as if she'd never abandoned it in the first place. "You didn't say anything about someone else being in that room with you two."

"Cover worked at a biogenetics lab. He knew some things. He was trying to tell me some of them about what really happened to President Sweet...how it was connected to Mayor Ernestine Johnson. I wasn't trying to hear any of it. I had already had my own dirt from my dealings with Pandora. I wasn't going to die for his sins as well." Champion looked back to see if they had made in progress in losing their tail. "Cover's dead now. I'm sure Serena got wind that three mortal enemies of her organization were together. I got out of dodge. Angel got recruited by the FBI. And I'm sure Danielle Rohm got to Cover."

"Rohm,"

"Yea, I knew her to be a little woman who dresses all in black and carries big, powerful guns wherever she goes. She's a contract killer. She's Serena's right hand man— _woman,_ I mean. I'm sure she was heavily responsible for helping shoot up the courthouse area when Serena was sprung during Operation Deliverance." Champion shook the cobwebs out of his head. "But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Eugene Cover's remains were found near the hotel where Angel and I shacked up for the night. Rohm's a damned professional alright. I'm sure she made it look like the standard murder-robbery to the boys in the bureau who were casing all the nearby streets thinking that they were going to nab me."

Despite all of her efforts the Cadillac had closed the distance. She had to get out of this main stretch of highway. Champion asked her what in the hell was she thinking. He told her that leaving the main highway was suicidal. _I guess that's what I get for thinking aloud_. Opinions were like reproductive organs: Everyone had one.

"Alright, Champion, enough about that morning that the FBI recruited Angel. Tell me more about the conversation that you two were having before this Cover fellow showed up."

"I know that it's not what you think it was, Roxanne." He said. "It wasn't this thought out, structured, Power Point presentation you are picturing it as. We talked about everything. I talked about my dear wife. She talked about her husband...her drinking issues. My turning myself over to the authorities was just one of my considerations." He put his head in his hands. "We talked about running away together...we even talked about...suicide."

She said, "Why didn't you?" Champion cursed her and exhaled a deep breath of exasperation. "I meant why didn't you go to the authorities?"

Champion spun around and looked out of the back window shield instead. He told her that maybe they'd lost other car at last. He didn't see anything. Roxanne was doubtful. She eased up off of the gas enough—

As now the Cadillac was driving straight towards them.

"Did you see how Serena escaped a few days ago?" Champion said to her and crossed himself. "Pandora's sphere of influence spreads like an eagle's wings." He seemed to come to decision about something. "No...I think that going to the authorities with what I know and with what I suspect would have been truly suicidal."

The Cadillac flicked its lights on and then off again and was closing on her Honda again after she barely avoided a head on collision with it a second earlier. Roxanne threw the transmission into reverse, altered her course and tossed it back into drive and sped to her left with all due speed. "No more long stories, Champion, what did you suspect?" She said to her passenger who had gone pallid. "Damn you, Champion, I said talk."

"411 wasn't a deep dark secret within the core members of the organization. It had been in the planning stages for years."

"Did you say _years_?"

"Yea, the 911 attacks and the war on Al-Qaeda actually delayed Pandora's plans and caused them to reevaluate their positon. Remember Pandora is made up of mostly US citizens who have or still work for our government in some shape manner or form. The Caretaker had been believed to say that the manpower and resources would not be reassigned from fighting the war on terror and defending the homeland for Pandora's private issues with a House in Chains. But as that external threat faded, Pandora became more focused on what led to where we are today."

"And what about Angel's role in all of this," The lights of the Cadillac had disappeared again. _The world is too quiet, Victor_. Victor told her the best time for hearing for strangers screaming in the distance is when your world was at its most still. "Where does Angel fit in this equation?" Roxanne aimed to get the Honda back on the main highway for now. She doused her own lights...learning from her opponent's example of stealth. She had to admit that part of her was enjoying the cat and mouse game with whoever was behind that other wheel. _You are_ _professionals_. She thought. _I am a professional_. She knew. _And I like cheese_.

And she was more than willing to match her skills with theirs.

"Why are you consumed with Angel?" He asked her. "What has she done to you?"

Roxanne Sanchez wrapped her trigger finger around her Nine for the first time this evening. She didn't point it at Champion, but she did put it far enough away from her body so he would see it.

"I'm asking the questions here, Champion."

"Angel knew about Keaton." He lowered his head, following the gun's trail wherever it went. "She knew that man's in's and out's. He's a strange bird but if anyone in that organization could control Keaton, Angel was the one. She's an expert in her field of psychology and better in most in the remaining fields dealing with the human mind."

Roxanne had a thought. "Maybe Keaton killed Erica?"

"Maybe,"

The black Cadillac had reappeared...just to her left. She had seen the silhouette of the car even before he turned his lights back on.

And then Roxanne made up her mind one last time this evening to wrap up this performance since the hour was growing late.

"Roxanne," Champion slid down in his seat. "What in the name of God are you getting ready to do?"

Roxanne floored the accelerator and left Champion to figure out the rest for himself. She did remind herself that she was in all of this for the truth. She had lived for it. She was willing to die for it as well.

"I'm going to live," She announced to Victor Castillo or whoever was driving the Cadillac in question, but felt Joseph Champion nodding from next to her in the passenger seat of the 15 year old Honda. "I'm going to live just long enough to kill Angel Hicks-Dupree."

The other car didn't call her bluff...as she half expected. She swerved at the last half second to avoid a head on collision that would have ended the life of everyone involved. Damn...she didn't clear it enough not to clip the other car. Both passengers in the Honda felt the impact. She closed her eyes for a second...to allow the contact to take her car where it may. When she opened her dark eyes she saw the other car flipping once and again until it finally rested on its top, the tires were spinning aimlessly. Champion looked no worse than he usually did so she left him buckled in the passenger seat gasping for breath.

She had her Nine out and drawn. She approached the Cadillac giving the car and the perimeter around the vehicle a wide berth. She licked the rest of the lip gloss from her lips. She tossed her hair out of her face so it would not cloud her vision of targets. She could smell a gas leak, but from the looks of it, it did not appear to be all that bad. She shouldn't worry about danger from an immediate explosion, at least not right away.

She checked behind her to make sure that no one had miraculously escaped the other car and gotten behind her without her seeing them. She stooped down, maintaining her balance with the strength in her calves.

She saw that no one was home.

Roxanne stood up and made a quick 360 to make a final check of her surroundings. She felt her tension levels decrease from a bloody red to a cautious yellow. She wondered if she would ever enjoy the calmness of a level green again.

In her mind she eliminated the FBI from her equation of potential drivers of this car. There was a less than a pint of blood on the dash and perhaps an ounce or two more on the driver's seat. There was a little less on the passenger side _. So there were two of you inside this_ _car._ The driver side had taken the brunt of the initial roll over and it also served as the final resting spot for it was well. But the FBI would have been quick to read off list of charges against her and all that.

Whoever it was didn't want to be identified. A part of her—the cheese lover who had enjoyed the thrill of the chase wanted press her advantage knowing that the passengers were at least partly injured. Maybe she could be the hunter...the pussycat for a time.

The reasonable voice won the day a few minutes later. Victor reminded her that she'd triumphed in this battle, but a war...and a potential ambush lie in those woods if she dared chase down whoever was in this car. There could have been more people in the backseat. She had no idea how many...or what kind of weaponry they were armed with either.

Roxanne Sanchez suddenly felt cold and very much alone.

And she was just that...very _alone_.

When she returned to her Honda, she saw that Joseph Champion had vanished from the scene as well.

She didn't disbelieve the stories he had told her...but she knew men like him. She knew, that even under the bouts of stress that Carver and the car chase tonight had presented, he was still leaving the meat of his story sealed and untold.

The Honda's frame was bent beyond probable repair but she started up just fine on the second try. Roxanne broke out in a...smile...for what felt like the first time in years. She let the windows down on both sides, the night air fresh out here far from the brushfires and tensions of Atlanta.

She put the car's transmission into drive and stepped on the gas at a slightly elevated pace. She was going on to see Christopher Prince who was perhaps another 45 minutes from where she was right now.

Roxanne had lost Joseph Champion.

She still didn't know what parties drove the black Cadillac who tried to kill her.

She should have felt like one for the loss column...didn't really feel that way.

The dark eyed woman had survived another day maybe where she not ought to have.

And yet her mood had darkened just as quickly when she glanced at the empty passenger seat as an old revelation shuttled its way from her brain to her heart.

The more and more she considered it...the more likely that Erica Lovings killer was seated all of this time right _next_ to her.

And Roxanne Sanchez had managed to let him escape her.
Angel

**County Road Motel; State Road 15, Five Miles North of Sparta, Georgia, 16** th **Day**

_Is it possible that Louis could have killed Erica_ , Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree thought as she gave Christopher's adjoining hotel room a polite knock. She heard him yell for her to hold on; he was grabbing a tee-shirt.

Angel's recollection of her last night with Joseph Champion had come in fits and spells, but was still mostly stalled memory. She'd drunk entirely too much even for her in the few hours the two of them were together. Only since she and Christopher had returned from their ominous visit with Muhammad Clark had she even remembered a couple of the statements Joseph had said. _Serena's playing for keeps, Angel. She's taking the gloves off_. He told her that is what had heard before he had enough and got out. _I believe that she's even going to unleash your boy, Keaton into the field soon._

And so Angel had to reevaluate whether Serena had Louis indeed stage the two 'scenes' knowing that the FBI would seek her services in the 411 and all other investigations since. From the reports that were flowing down the bureau channels through Christopher to her...Roxanne Sanchez had found Erica Lovings in the same positioning as the dolls were at the created murder scenes. Christopher's stepdaughter had been strangled. She had also been shot once in the back of the head. Her hands and feet had also been bound.

So either Louis or someone else close to all of this staged all three scenes, the two manufactured ones and the actual one.

And where does the name Roxanne Sanchez ring a bell...Christopher opened the door at last and showed her in. He was wearing a black tee shirt he had just mentioned through the door and black rayon pajama pants that played well off of his opaque skin coloring. He'd gained a little weight across his middle over the years, but he was still more than appealing in her...and Angel was sure, _many_ women's eyes. She could still remember their little romp in the hay that happened two years before she and Seth had married as if it were yesterday. Both Christopher and Seth were equipped and capable enough, but lacked the exotic positioning and experimentation that she so often desired from men. _Damn you Doc_ , she said to herself using his tone, _I came to your place upset and vulnerable after Hoshi's accident and you used it to fulfill_ _your lifelong curiosity about bedding me_. And she knew that if he truly spoke the statement aloud he would not be lying. She should have saved her curiosity and her seduction for another night...

She wore a housecoat only over her bra and panties and sat on his bed next to him. She did not come to seduce him tonight. But he'd seen her... _all_ of her before, he more than any other man on the planet, knew what kind of creature that sat inches across the bed from him. After they were done with their business, she would retire into her bottles, her nudity and the thrills...of her own fingers if that's what she damned well needed tonight.

"So how are you, Mister Jailbird?"

He tried and failed to suppress a grin. "Don't start with me, Doc."

Angel turned on her serious gage. "I'm serious, Christopher." She sat on her good leg. "I thought that you could use some company. I'm here if you need me...you know, if you want to talk."

"Sure." Christopher pushed himself off of his bed and walked into the kitchenette. "As long as you don't mention anything that has transpired in my life over, let's say, the past thirty years or so."

"You're being too hard on yourself, Christopher." She said. "Today could have ended up a lot worse. And we did learn a lot."

And it could have indeed. The warden was on vacation but his number two gave Christopher hell about his run in with Muhammad Clark. Angel figured the man had nothing in the manner of true charges to level at her friend. Clark did physically attack a FBI Agent and Christopher had reserved the right to defend himself. Angel knew that this sit in warden just wanted to vent and get back at Christopher or any Prince after what occurred at Calhoun during Xavier's final few hours in captivity there.

"You want something to drink?" Christopher showed her one of his cans of ginger ale. "Or is this not strong enough for you?"

Angel cocked a brow and it was her turn to try and fail to hide a smile. "Now don't you start with _me."_ She asked for bottled water instead. It would hold her into she disappeared to the room on the far side of the wall behind her. "I haven't had anything to drink since we left Atlanta. I don't drink while I'm on duty, Christopher. I especially wouldn't with you knowing how much scrutiny your people are under right now."

He tossed her the bottled water and lowered his head. "I'm sorry, Doc. I shouldn't have. Even kidding between old friends should only go so far."

"Don't apologize." She took a swig. Water never quenched her real thirst...nothing did. She decided right then and there to cut through the remaining bullshit and cut straight to her point she theorized about Keaton and Erica and see what her old friend thought about it.

"I thought about the same thing, Doc." He said after she had finished speaking. "I'm with you...and more importantly, and so is the brass back in Atlanta. Someone else put those scenes together. Someone other than Keaton; and that same person probably killed Erica. Serena wants to get into my head, Doc. I hate the idea that Erica probably paid the price for that with her life."

"Yea," Angel said. "In speaking of which, have you spoken to Denise anymore? I didn't hear her drive up or depart."

"She called me back after you and I spoke about it. Something came up. I'm not sure she's coming down here at all. This is a tricky little area of the state to get to without getting lost. Denise doesn't have a strong sense of direction. If she couldn't find someone to drive her down here I wouldn't recommend her trying to find where we are alone."

Christopher drank his ginger ale and planted himself back on the bed next to her. He sat the can by three other empties on his nightstand. "Anyway, I told her I would drop by her apartment tomorrow when we get back."

Angel asked him for a second time if he were okay. He shrugged it off, apologized to her for not being more professional today and looked out the window at the full moon.

She sat in behind him and massaged his neck. He was even tenser than she had expected. The stress and strain of everything transpiring around him was taking a toll. "Christopher, you were molested. Louis Keaton molested you. Muhammad Clark was kidnapping and molesting children at the same time. Now, Keaton is likely out doing it again. When you connect all of this, in addition to the war of words between your brother's organization and Pandora...it must be like storm clouds that have opened up on top of you all at once. It's like a tempest rising."

"You just don't know how wrong you are, Doc..."

Angel squeezed the muscles of his biceps, triceps and worked her way along down his lower back. He seemed responsive to her touch. She reminded herself that she did not come to his room to seduce him, but if he allowed her to...

"I wish I were wrong, Christopher." She said. "Remember you and I share that particular bond."

And Angel's subconscious dug up the two terrible episodes of her life with one swing of a majestic shovel. In one pile of dirt there was Tyson Vincent who had found her father's residence after an extensive search for the man that had made his criminal existence miserable. She had been only a bonus find when he showed up at her father's home. Vincent was content to just sit in her father's house, drink all of his beer and wait for him to come home so he could blow his head off with his loaded shotgun while his little girl could only watch. But after a few days in her captivity Angel used a weapon in her and her father's defense that most 12 year olds didn't even know they possessed: She used her maturing body to lure Vincent into a since of drunken comfort, touched him, put her lips on him...and stabbed him through his heart time and again with a butcher knife he never saw coming into he was very dead and she was covered in his blood.

The second 'episode' truly had been a sexual assault; though no one knew that if there had been such a way to label her as a coconspirator in it, then she would have had to live with that title the remainder of her days. She wanted this young man Bradley Marlow. She really wanted him the night they spent together in his dorm room, but after two hours she had grown tired of his fumbling with her blouse, his awkward kisses and his manhood not responding in full. It was only after she cursed him and told him about his putrid efforts did the date really get interesting. He tore her blouse and bra from her body and somehow managed to pull her tight jeans off of her in one swift motion. She fought back...but a well planted back hand had ended her defensive efforts quickly. When he removed his pants his manhood extended a full salute to her.

The sad truth...the absolute saddest truth is that she still had _wanted_ him. Yet, the back hand and subsequent bruise that she would wear on her upper cheek for the next few weeks, was far too high a price to pay for a mere sexual escapade that she could have gotten from a number of eager Bradley Morrows. So she fought him some more...and he stuck her time and again...until she found her hand grasping at the lamp on the nightstand—

"You're wrong, Doc. You and I don't share this bond at all." Christopher was saying, bringing her back to the here and now. She had been cleared of any wrong doing in the death of Bradley Morrow. It still didn't wash the blood that was splattered all of her clothes or wash the memory of how that scene could have and should have played out.

In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade. Christopher lifted himself off of the bed and walked back to the refrigerator. When her eyes found his again, he looked like a different man." You see, Angel, I was never molested by Keaton at all. He _never_ touched me."

"What?"

He cracked open another ginger ale and downed most of it in a single gulp. Angel jumped at the sound of the soda can opening. On a more miniature scale it made the same terrible cracking sound that the young Morrow boy's head made when she had bashed his skull with that lamp so long ago.

"I wasn't molested." She patted the warm spot he had vacated beckoning him to return to it. He reluctantly sat next to her. She wrapped her arm around him from behind and held him close. "The truth of what truly happened just sort of disappeared into what everyone else around me thought and believed. I think after a few years I actually began to believe it myself."

Your tale sounds terribly similar to mine, Christopher. Angel had treated patients who had used imaginary abuses for whatever monetary gains that came of them. She had begun to call them Beautiful Liars. _Stop it_ , she told herself. _Christopher isn't my patient. He's not a liar_. _He's my friend. He's the only friend I have in this world, listen to him_. "I don't understand. Talk to me, Christopher."

He looked to ceiling for guidance. "Where do I start, Angel? How do I begin to tell you this story?"

She kissed him on his cheek. It marked him...and they both laughed at that. "I know that the 'beginning' is almost clichéd it's so overused in my profession, but it is and has always been a good start. Why don't you start there?"

"I guess that truly is where it begins." Christopher nodded. "And the start is probably the most painful part of this tale for me." He exhaled and the pain of what was to come played at the corners of his mouth as his lips trembled. "I can still smell the peanuts roasting. I can still smell the old stench of draft beer. My dad had taken be to my first baseball game."

Angel smiled. She had heard most of this tale before. She had also known men who loved their fathers though she had wondered if she ever truly loved hers. Christopher had adored and honored his father for his entire life even though the man had abandoned his dying mother for Xavier's mom. It still made her curious why he and not Xavier had followed his footsteps as A House in Chains Number One. "It was a ball game that the Braves actually won if I remember."

"Yea, that was a rarity in those days. It turned out to be a nearly perfect night in a young man's life." Christopher's look turned dark and edgy again. And Angel wasn't considering the context of his skin color as she thought it. "And yet he ruined it for me. And Louis Keaton has kept on ruining every night in my life since."

"Louis Keaton," Angel's mouth went dry, but not for the remainder of her bottled water. "He was lurking in the background, in the shadows inside the stadium. He timed his move on you. No one saw him when he...took you."

Christopher nodded. "I convinced my dad to let me go to the john alone. Keaton had a short, blunt knife at my throat before I could snatch my next breath. He made me put on this tee shirt that said _camp_ just like the one he wore. When we walked back towards and passed the food court I saw dozens of young boys and adults wearing the same shirts. We just blended in. Eventually he pushed our way through the sparse crowd without anyone noticing anything was wrong.

_Keep him focused and move the story forward without making him feel that you are rushing through parts that you already know_. "You told me that once you became a captive that he would threaten your family as well."

"I have to give it to him. It was a simple but effective strategy. 12 year old boys can't understand everything, but I understood that much very quickly. But it was what happened next that's more important to this conversation we are having."

"I know that you told me that you and the other half dozen boys were being held in a house not too far from where you and your family were living at the time."

"We were. And every day and every night I had to listen while he would take one of the boys and... _do_ what he would do to them."

"Go on, Christopher," Angel squeezed him around his waist. Her housecoat had fallen open and her bra pushed against his back. It was of no consequence. She would do nothing that would endanger any chance of Christopher not revealing this horrible truth to her. She did not know if the _opportunity_...if his courage would ever rise to the surface for them to travel down this road again. "Don't stop now, Christopher. I'm here."

"Keaton proclaimed me his general. My duties included watching over the other children, especially when he would leave us for an hour here, a few hours there. I was responsible for keeping them in line. I was told to keep them quiet." Her childhood friend blinked back tears for the first time. Angel's followed soon after. "I can still hear them call out for their mothers. They were so scared. But there were times when they would douse that fear long enough to plan an escape, or they would plot to attack Keaton. But he had made a deal with me. He offered me something I dared not refuse. As long as I kept the other boys in line...he promised never to touch _me_. I would have to remain his captive. But he would never do to me what he was doing to them."

Angel spun herself around until the two friends faced one another. She could smell the ginger ale on his breath. It was not unpleasant. She stroked his shaven head with her hands. He was also exposed to her nearly naked body but she didn't care and he didn't seem to mind the free second look he was getting.

"Christ," Was all that she could think to say. "You do understand that the physiological trauma that you experienced...that you are _still_ experiencing is far worse that the physical invasion that your body could have ever withstood."

"Yea, I guess so. That's what the shrinks that I saw in the months after told me." Christopher searched the ceiling for answers again, but still found none. "God, I can still hear them screaming, Doc. Every time he took one them I could hear it. As crazy as it sounds, Angel, I sometimes wished it was me. Those other boys hated me. They hated my guts. I was the teacher's pet. I was molester's puppet. I was the only one of them not being abused and they hated me for it."

Angel knew that her friend was close to cracking. She had the terrible truth. She had all of it. But he needed to finish this once and for all. "And he promised to never molest you and to never harm those other children unless you tried to escape."

Christopher's laugh held no humor; in fact it may have been the bitterest sound that she'd ever heard. "Keaton soon trusted me enough to have me run the errands for him. Can you believe that, Doc?" Chris said as the tears flowed freely. "I actually passed my own home almost every single day when I went out to buy food and drinks for the other boys. Keaton knew I wouldn't dare run away. He'd told me about the Caretaker. He warned me what would happen to those other boys if I did not return to him as he asked."

"I'm so sorry, Christopher."

"I tried to choose times when I knew that knew one would be home as I passed."

"The temptation must have been overwhelming."

"It was," Christopher nodded. "I was told time and again that the Caretaker and his agents in Pandora were watching my every step. He told me he would have both parties...those helpless boys killed as well as my father, step mother and Xavier as well. Worse of all he promised me that I would be recaptured and that I would no longer be spared his pleasures if anything went wrong."

Angel allowed the conversation a breath—she let their tears dry themselves before she pushed on to the climax of this terrible episode of her friend's life. "So that is why you reacted so... _violently_...when Xavier found you."

"I tried to run as fast as I could when he spotted me. Goddamn him, he had cut school that day. He wasn't supposed to be at home. He was. He recognized me, called my name, and ran me down. He had to tackle and pin me down to keep me from escaping."

"You poor soul,"

Christopher hopped up and a vein in his temple flared. " _To hell with me, Doc_ ," He yelled. "This Caretaker fella must have been enraged. I had single handily endangered his entire operation. I knew Louis Keaton. I knew where he was. I could identify the man abducting Atlanta's children or at least one of the men that were. So instead of risking Keaton's discovery and the exposure of Pandora to the world, the Caretaker killed them all. _I_ killed them all. The APD found all six boys in six different areas with their throats slit and their bodies burned."

The childhood friends held each other and cried for a long time afterwards.

Angel asked him in the minutes following that, "Who else knows about this? Who else knows what you have told me tonight?"

Chris expressed to her what she may have guessed on her own: The doctors who were appointed to his case must have examined him and realized the lack of physical abuse to his private area. He told a shrink or two that treated him afterwards. Yet, these men were under the scrutiny of doctor-patient privilege. They would never divulge to anyone other than his father and step mother what really happened...and what _didn't_ happen to him."

"What about your brother?" Angel and Christopher's younger half-brother Xavier had never been terribly close. She always felt that he tolerated her existence because of what her friendship meant to his older sibling.

"We had a heart to heart after what Carter and his goons did to him up at Princeton. And I told Hoshi on the night that I asked for her hand in marriage."

"You never told Denise did you?"

"No," Christopher said without malice. "Xavier and now _you_ are the only living people who know the entire truth. Back to Denise though, we were married for 12 years and yet I never felt close enough to her in all of that time to mention this part of my past. I guess, in part, the truth about what happened to me is part of the reason why what Erica did to cut so deeply."

"Erica," Angel felt another heartfelt story coming. As badly as she wanted to get out of the rest of these clothes and get into her booze, if her friend needed her a while longer—

And then there was a _knock_ on Christopher's door.

The two of them glared at one another.

No one knew that they were here except...

There was another _knock_ , this time the thumping was more urgent than the first round. Angel tightened her housecoat without looking at it as Christopher stepped towards the door with his pistol in his hand.

Denise Prince said from the far side of the door: "Hi, Chris. Look, I changed my mind. I needed to... _we_ need to talk. Will you let me in?"

"Denise...hey," He holstered his gun and opened the door. "You can come in but I _do_ have company."

When the door opened Denise did not break the threshold. Instead she said: "Oh, my God. I should have known you would be here with _her_."

Angel ignored what she said and offered the other woman her hand in greeting. "Hi, Denise...it has been a long time."

Apparently Denise didn't feel like shaking hands tonight so Angel guessed that a little small talk was probably out as well.

Chris' cheeks flushed as much as his skin color allowed. You would have thought that he had been caught in an affair. "Denise, this isn't what it looks like. We were down here interviewing an important—"

Denise stepped past her ex-husband and gave her full measure of furor to Angel. "If I truly had been honest with myself I shouldn't really be surprised to see you here."

Angel felt herself frown. "Wait a minute, Denise." She said cautiously. "Just like Christopher said: We were just talking—"

"Yea, I see how much _talking_ you two were doing." Denise swiped at Christopher's face where Angel's lipstick had made its mark. The other woman then took three giant footsteps, planted her hands on her hips and got into Angel's face. "Just look at you—you're dressed only in a bathrobe and only God knows what else in the middle of the night in my husband's hotel room."

"I'm your _ex-_ husband," Christopher reminding her. "Denise, we're divorced. We have been for a long time now. Let's all calm down—"

" _Damn you and your calm_ , Sir," Denise shouted at him. " _I know that Erica hurt you baby. I know that I've hurt you as well in the past. My little girl is dead now. How much longer are you going to hold a grudge against us, your family?"_

"I'm _not_ , Denise," But Christopher made the mistake of looking away when he said it. "I swear it's not the truth."

"Well then, _Sir,_ I guess you'll have the chance to finally prove it." Denise smiled for the first time since Christopher had opened the door for her and she directed it at Angel. "I can't think of a better time or better person for you to make this proclamation in front of, Chris. Your lifelong friend can bear witness to our announcement."

"What are you talking about, Denise?" Agent Christopher Prince wanted to know.

Angel _did_ know. But it didn't make hearing the insanity travel from Denise's lips to both of their sets of ears any easier whatsoever.

"My little girl is dead. I need you back in my life more than ever before. Almost a decade and a half ago you asked for my hand in marriage, baby." Denise got on one knee. It was the sweetest thing...it was the most pathetic display Angel had ever watched another woman do. "I'm asking for you to marry me again. I'm asking you to take me back at your wife."

Angel looked to her friend—to witness as Denise had said—what would come next.

Christopher said quietly: "Denise...you know I can't do that."

Denise screamed at him in an extraterrestrial voice of grief and insanity that Angel had only heard mouthed from a handful of patients in her long career. She remembered summoning security to keep them at bay until they could be subdued and eventually taken away in restraints. There was no security and no restraints to her here in this off the map hotel room. Angel had decided not to wait around to see how this one turned out. "I should leave you two alone." Angel limped past the couple.

"No, _Angel_ ," Denise spat her name out. She brushed past Angel on her way out the door from which she came. Once she was out in the courtyard she spun around long enough to say: "You should stay. Whatever happens next is on your head, Doctor. As for you, _Sir,_ there are only two women in this world that you have ever loved, and you've proven to me for the very last fucking time that I am not sure as hell one of them."
Seth

**20 Feet from Christopher Prince's motel room, 16** th **Day**

MOMENTS BEFORE:

"Erica lied."

Dr. Seth Dupree frowned at the woman sitting on the passenger side of his rental car. "Excuse me?"

Denise fumbled with her purse and used the time to gather her thoughts. She actually took a moment to smile at him, but it was a humorless one that Seth thought was more than a little sad. There was a full moon out tonight here in the middle of nowhere in central Georgia. Seth checked the electronic map on his phone one last time to see if they had landed in the right parking lot of the right hotel where Denise's ex-husband, Special Agent Chris Prince was staying. In the distance they both heard a dog howling. A minute later what sounded like a pack of dogs joined the first in the late night serenade.

"When Erica was 15 years old she accused Chris of molesting her. My little girl fabricated the entire thing."

"What do you mean?" Seth asked "Why would she do such a thing?"

Denise's nostrils flared as she exhaled audibly. "I'll answer your first question first, Seth. Chris was serving warrants for the bureau when he fell ill and went home early one Wednesday afternoon. Chris never missed work. There were many days I tried to talk him out of leaving the house when he was sick as a dog. So when he called me and told me he was headed home I knew that he was feeling rotten."

"Erica didn't count on him returning there did she?" Seth could figure early on where this story was leading. "What did your ex-husband find her doing when he got home?"

"He heard someone screaming from one of the bedrooms upstairs soon after he walked in. He told me later that he pulled out his gun and sprinted upstairs. He could only guess at that point what was going on? Had someone broken in? Was someone possibly hurting or even raping Erica? The cries were definitely coming from her room, so he broke the door down and entered."

"Denise, are you sure you want to tell me this—

"He found Erica home alright. She had some naked younger girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, strapped with rope to the four bed post by her wrist and ankles. My husband told me that my little girl was shoving a broom stick handle up the younger girl's vagina—and she _didn't_ stop, even after Chris had broken her door down."

"Did you know that Erica was bisexual?"

"You are asking the right person the _wrong_ question, Seth. The real question is how long I knew Erica was a bull dyke. She'd always showed an attraction to other girls for as long as I could remember."

Seth squeezed Denise's hand. "I know that you just said that this younger girl was screaming. But was it in, I don't know, pleasure or pain? How did Erica defend what she was doing? Did it start as a consensual thing—"

"Chris told me that he believed it might have begun that way and I can't disagree with his assessment. The other girl begged Chris to untie her. When he did, he turned his back on her for just a second, she hit him across his head, snatched her clothes off of a neighboring chair and ran away. None of us ever saw her again."

Seth frowned again. "So this girl never filed a complaint? And I don't really understand how this tie in with these allegations you speak of that Erica filed against Agent Prince?"

"Erica threatened to file her own attempted molestation charge against Chris if he dared tell anyone about what he saw going on in her bedroom. She knew about his abduction by Louis Keaton. She knew he had been molested himself. She understood how Science claims these things worked in cycles."

"And what happened then, Denise?"

"Like I said before, Chris and Erica were never close. Erica's teenaged years only made the animosity between them grow. She had been caught shoplifting a handful of times, cutting class, involved in fights—if it were a sin then Erica was likely to involve herself in it. Six months after this particular incident though Chris had enough of her antics. He exploded after Erica put another young girl in the hospital during an altercation outside a movie theatre. He read her the riot act right then and there after the police arrived to arrest her."

"And what did she do, Denise?"

"She went off. She summoned up her best crocodile tears. She screamed to anyone who would listen that Chris was sexually abusing her and had been doing so for years. How could anyone not see that his abuse was the real reason behind her poor behavior? She was a victim of this abuse. She needed help."

"And your daughter knew that Chris past abduction and abuse by Louis Keaton would work against him in any court of law or public opinion."

Denise nodded. "Chris was fortunate that the allegations didn't become more widespread than they actually were. The FBI, especially Agent Sheridan, kept as much internal as they could manage. They were receiving daily reports from the APD. Even the local media never got wind of it." She said. "To be perfectly honest, I thought the situation would turn out far worse for him than it actually had."

"How do you mean?"

Tears ran down Denise's cheeks. Seth took his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wiped them away although more followed in their wake. He had agreed to drive her down here against his better judgment. Yet, a part of him hoped that Angel would be with Prince when they found them. He had an urging to see his wife so badly again. Perhaps they could still work things out. _Hold on, Seth_ , The Gray Man told himself, _here comes the worse part of this story yet_.

"I lost all objectivity. I screamed rape even when Erica would stop long enough to catch her breath. I knew about Erica's sexual preferences. I was aware of her tendencies towards anger and aggression. Most of all, I believed Chris when he told me what he had walked in on at our home." Denise turned to look at Seth at last. "I guess mother and daughter were more alike than I ever wanted to admit. I had committed myself to destroying the man I loved...a good man...to protect my lying daughter."

Seth swallowed hard. "Chris... _all_ of you somehow finally got past all of this. You were married for at least a year longer. And the FBI reinstated Chris back to full duty. And like you said, the media never learned of anything that was going on?"

"The FBI suspended Chris with pay for thirty days while they conducted their own internal investigation. They guarded the reasoning for his suspension so that none of the other agents in his field office would find out. There were rumors, of course, but nothing that anyone could substantiate. Eventually, as you said, he was reinstated after they deducted that he was innocent of all the charges that he had been wrongfully brought against him. My God, Seth...if the accusations had spread on his job or out in the general public—especially _now_ , with this entire thing between Xavier's A House in Chains and Pandora, I could only guess the damage that would be done to his reputation and career."

_Your daughter's death hopefully sealed that door forever, Denise_. Seth hated himself for thinking that way. "Nevertheless, what happened ruined any chance for reconciliation between your daughter and her stepfather." Seth said as a matter of fact. "I'm sure it severed most of the bonds between the two of you as well?"

Denise answered his last question only with more tears. A part of him wanted to comfort this woman. Yet, a more rational portion remembered what he had witnessed of Denise's transformations from rational to irrational from her in her apartment. Denise could be vicious. She could be vindictive. If Chris Prince had to deal with two women like this in one household for years he had been a lucky man to have survived it at all.

"I was so spiteful." Denise shook her head almost violently back and forth. "I was a fool who clung on to her daughter's lies and ignored the facts. And now with Erica gone...I've lost them both."

Seth lifted her chin up. "You can still make this right with Chris. Have you ever formally apologized, Denise?" She shook her head once this time. "You might be amazed how saying the right thing can cure a lot of ills, even if it is well after the fact. I think that he would appreciate hearing that from you. It's never too late to make amends." He hit the button that unlocked the doors and flashed a much needed smile of understanding if not forgiveness her way. " _Go_...he's twenty feet away...go on, Denise, make this right as best as you can at this point."

"You're right," After she opened the passenger door, she scooted her body back far enough to clutch his cheek and kiss him on the lips. "Thank you for being here for me, Seth. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I am glad that we didn't... _you know_...before. You've been such a good friend when I so desperately needed one."

Seth smiled at her. "Go," He said again. "It's never too late. Take your leap of faith."

She started out and then stopped again. "It's not my business, Doctor, but I can't shake the feeling that Angel has been as foolish as I have." Denise lowered her voice. "You should give her one more chance as well. You're a good man and I can tell that your marriage means everything to you. If she really loves you—give her one last chance to prove it to you." She stopped long enough to stare out into the full moonlight with a hardened gaze that he could only guess what it meant. "I know that this is my last chance to prove mine."

"Go,"

Seth's head collapsed on the headrest, fatigue overcoming him. So much had happened in such a short period of time. All of those endless hours they had worked at the triage center...and now this long drive down here into the middle of nowhere.

He hoped Denise had taken his words to heart because he had taken hers. Seth knew that his wife likely was shacked up in one of these hotel rooms, asleep (hopefully alone) with a nearly empty liquor bottle on the dresser nearby. _Tomorrow_ , the Gray Man told himself, _tomorrow I_ _will call you again, Angel_. Or better yet he will _attempt_ to see her. Whatever happens from there he feels that he accomplished what he came to Atlanta for in the first place.

But this night belonged to Chris and Denise Prince—

Denise had returned.

Too soon;

Too damned soon;

" _Go_ ," She said. And when he failed to immediately turn the key in the ignition, "No questions... _just go_."

Denise had been crying again since she left the car. What was more frightening is that she was wearing that same hard look that he couldn't put a name to before. What was even more worrisome is that the look has become more pronounced and has now covered her entire face. Seth tried to touch her cheek again but she backed away from his touch. A fresh round of tears ran down her face instead. He obeyed her request and mutely spun the rental around out of the parking lot not looking at the hotel room where Denise had come back from.

He does notice a Latino woman with dark eyes sitting in a wreck of a car that never took her eyes off of him as he drove away.

Two hours later Denise slammed her bathroom door in Seth's face. He called her name once...twice...and yet even after the fifth time she refused to answer him. He walked back to her front door and carefully closed it after she nearly tore it from its frame. When he finally arrived back at the locked bathroom door he could still hear her sobbing from the other side.

"It's _over_ , Denise said. "It's over. It's all really over. I have nothing left."

"Denise, sometimes we have to let go of our fear...all of it. We have to stick it in our rearview mirror and treat it like any other shadow that cast itself in our path at midnight." Seth sat on the floor and caressed the door as if it were a lover's face. He could hear Denise wailing now, letting all of her emotion pour out of her. "The dawn is approaching, Denise. Soon, so very soon, all that you will see is that shadow of doubt fading. All of your fear will have dissipated." Denise's crying slowed some, but he could still hear her heavy breathing. The emotion had come to her in a tsunami wave...but the tide was lowering. These were all good signs. "Just remember when the dawn breaks you have to be prepared to take your leap of faith. The fears of the night never go away, not completely. But each day you have to wash all the horrors of our mind away. You must have faith." Seth said. "I have had my dark nights as well, Denise. Let me tell you a story."

And he voiced to her of his four friends from school and how he had helped cause the death of Antoinette Burner who drowned when she went overboard off of the boat.

And then he told her that the survivors of that storm had not fared well since that fateful night either.

Clinton Sessions, the young man who first spotted Antoinette after she went overboard died when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 911. And Seth often wondered did his dear friend see that plane just before it finished its climatic approach.

Sam Casey did not die so heroically. His partying and drinking ways only increased after Antoinette's death. He was one of around 50 people dancing on a deck who died at an apartment complex outside of Chicago when the deck collapsed with the partyers falling to their fate below.

Pam Toliver, the woman who saw Antoinette fall overboard, the woman who Seth Dupree called but did not speak to the other day may have suffered worse than any of the others. At least they died in one tragic moment. _I'll bet a piece of you dies every day, my dearest Pam_.

Seth knew from his wife's work that many uniformed people call the victims of domestic abuse impotent and weak. Many of those same people would say that all these so called victims have to do is get up and leave their abuser. And that the bumps on Pam's chin and the purple bruises underneath her eyes... and the cuts on her breast and the burns that reach from the inside her thighs to her womanhood are her own fault. They would say that no man...not a husband, boyfriend, father, uncle, distant cousin, best friend could continually inflict these types of wounds on a woman who fought back.

_But Pam_ did _fight back once didn't she_?

And the Gray Man knew that the fight caused her then 16 year old _son_ to rupture her spleen when he nearly killed her.

"Are you ready, Denise," He asked her at last from the floor outside her bathroom door. "Are you ready to take your final leap of faith?"

Denise said this instead: "Seth tell me if you have you ever heard what the worst part of going to Hell is?"

Her question stunned him. He'd never given the manner much thought. "If the scriptures could be believed what could possibly be worse than the eternal burning, Denise?"

"I once read somewhere that while we suffer that eternal burning of our souls that our _minds_ are still active, Seth," Denise said with a quivering voice. "And that our minds still desire all of the sin that caused us to go to Hell in the first place. So I now know that I'm going to spend an eternity angry...hateful...but mostly I'm going to spend that eternity desiring Chris Prince."

After another round of tears she said in a far steadier voice: "I'm coming out, Seth. I'm ready to take my leap."

Seth heard the lock unlatch.

The door opened.

And a nude Denise Prince ran past him leaving an unsuspecting Seth Dupree grasping at the air around her ankles as she angled to jump out of the living room window.

He got to his feet...and gave chase...the entire scene playing out so very fast...yet, so very _deliberately_...almost motionless.

When the glass shattered as her body thumped it...he knew that he was already too _late_ , but he completed his dash to the window sill anyway.

Denise had taken her leap of faith...

...and landed nearly head first into the pavement ten stories below. Her nude body lay broken and bloody on the sidewalk as bystanders began to scream in acknowledgement of what he had already had knowledge of.

Dr. Seth Dupree collapsed himself. He found himself seated on the carpet just underneath the window sill this time. He cried out loud. He cried where only he could hear it. He cried.

For all of his life, Dr. Seth Dupree felt he was holding his breath... _waiting_ ; he hoped to still mend his broken heart.

And although he could only watch as poor Denise had chosen to take her ominous leap of faith to her death.

He hoped to still breathe again.

He hoped
Chapter Twelve

Xavier Prince lacks the will necessary to stomach a prolonged engagement with you, Serena. You need to exploit him on this.

-The Caretaker's private conversation with Serena Tennyson 13 weeks before the former's death in September 2010.
Chris

**Christopher Prince's residence, Wendy Hill Road, 20** th **Day**

Denise's people started arriving in mass soon after 10:00 am.

Special Agent Christopher Prince's house had started smelling of fried chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas and sweet potato pies hours since the crack of dawn. There were four of Denise's female family members cooking in his kitchen, the food to be served in traditional family after her homecoming service scheduled for 1:00 pm. Yet, it didn't take a half an hour of her people's arrival at his home before things went to hell from there. Denise's fraternal grandfather, who looked as if his suit had been tailored for someone else, knocked a decently expensive vase to the tile floor ten minutes ago. Two of her cousins learned upon their arrival here that they were sharing the same boyfriend. His ex-wife's beached whale of a nephew abruptly left the premises, with a chicken leg in his hand, after he learned it was his _other_ Aunt Denise that had died.

A half of dozen of her former co-workers spoke to him with tears in their eyes. Her oldest living uncle blew his nose into a handkerchief, patted Chris twice on the gut, commented on what a fine young lady his niece was and asked Chris if he had any liquor in the house. Her toothpick of a brother, who had just been paroled for whatever his _latest_ arrest was, hugged Chris around his neck and apologized to him for all the drama his older sister put him through. And then he asked him if he thought she or Erica would have any money left off of the insurance policies after the funeral expenses to pay his bail bondsman. Finally, her cleavage revealing cousin Bonnie whispered in his ear that she fucking knew in her spirit that he had thrown Denise out of that window. She was still praying about it. And if the spirit had allowed her to prove such a thing she'd fucking spit on him right now. But she knew he was in bed with them Roosters and they would protect his ass.

Hope and memory wasn't on his side. He knew he was a dolphin swimming in an ocean full of sharks; but a dolphin nonetheless.

Maybe now he understood why he never got a long with these people.

A trusted high school buddy of his, who still wore his hair in a ponytail like a girl, was greeting his guest as they walked through the door. Chris saw him point in his general direction in the living room when Tabitha Blue, his partner showed up.

"Hey partner," Blue said, not quite knowing to do with her hands. She was dressed in a black blouse and matching trousers. She had her hair untied and it hung down to her shoulders. She wore a touch of blush on her cheeks and less lipstick than that on her mouth. This was her equivalent of being dressed up. Chris couldn't ever remember seeing her so... _pretty_ before.

"Tabitha," he kissed some of the blush on her cheek. "Hey, thanks for coming."

Chris noticed how uncomfortable his partner looked. She shifted in her stance and buried her hands deeper in her pants pockets. Social calls weren't his partner's calling. And although Chris knew there wasn't a racist bone in her body, he was sure that Blue had never been around these many Black folks without having her gun drawn.

"Uh..." She started to say something. "Agent Sheridan's been trying to reach you."

Chris nodded and checked his private cell phone for messages. "Sheridan should have known to call me on my business cell." He spoke up to be heard over a room full of Denise's friends and family. He also saw that he missed yet another call from his doctor. _The man must_ _think that I am purposely ducking him_. "I've been trying to tie up a million loose ends over here. You know, statements to the police, dealing with the insurance companies, and calling Denise's family."

"I understand." She patted his hand and that drew a sneer from Bonnie. _I told you that_ _you were in bed with them Roosters..._ he could almost hear her thinking aloud. "I'm sure that our boss understands too. He apologizes for missing this. He's trying to tie up some loose ends of his own as well. He told me to tell you to take all of the time that you need."

Chris knew that his superior would have meant just that under normal operations and caseloads. The last 19 days hadn't qualified for anything near normal however. "I appreciate the sentiment." He smiled because he thought that his partner needed to see him smile. "I'm okay, Tabitha, really. Denise had been my _ex_ -wife for a couple of years now. We weren't in love anymore. That part of our relationship had deteriorated a long time ago. I'm okay." He lowered his voice and beckoned Blue closer. "Talk to me about our cases."

She relaxed a bit...well, at least as much as Tabitha Blue ever relaxed. Chris knew that he was retreating into a far more familiar territory with this line of questioning. "A fifth and sixth child had been reported missing in the past 24 hours."

"Damn."

"We found another staged scene. You're doctor friend helped me investigate it and pick it apart."

Chris lowered his voice any further as he saw that Bonnie was still looking on. "Tell me about it."

Special Agent Tabitha Blue told him that Keaton or whoever had placed another action figure, or doll if you may, in a tightly fitted area about 20 blocks from where we found the first one. Most of what Angel said sounded like the psycho gibberish that she shared with them all at the other crime scenes: The action figure was Black, was supposed to represent a minor in his pre-teens and definitely male. He had slash marks around his throat and a real bullet lodged in his head as well.

"What is different from the other four previous scenes," Blue added smoothly, "Is that this doll was turned on his hands and knees."

"In a sexual sense I know that could be looked at two ways."

"That's what Doctor Hicks-Dupree said as well. She also said that it could be looked at from a non-sexual context as a missionary stance. Anyway, I was there when she told Sheridan, Deputy Director Rice and some other higher ups that these boys were only days from being molested."

Chris watched his partner hesitate...her monologue paused while she figured something else out. He asked her: "Is there something else, Tabitha?"

"This doll had black marker marks all over his naked torso, and the theory made the rounds that the markings represented these children being burned."

"Angel concluded this as well?"

Blue glanced away. "Actually, _I_ did, Chris. But the doctor seconded my opinion and presented it as such to our superiors." She shifted her weight, just as uncomfortable talking about her person as she was about her manner of appearance today. "Angel's conclusion is that this phase of abductions and kidnappings is drawing to a close and like we said...a more _physical_ element is coming."

"I believe that I can guess the rest," Chris added. "The flame markings on this last doll's torso are a representation of these children being offered to Serena Tennyson's Dragon—them dying in a fiery manner if Keaton is disturbed in any way.

Blue nodded and had to push her thin hair out of her eyes. Chris could see a clear image of children screaming...and...dying, but he did not know whether the image was from days past or night still to come.

I abandoned the first captives but I swear that I won't rest until these little boys are found.

Blue looked as if there were still more for her to reveal. He patted her on one of her skinny shoulders and urged her to continue.

"The doctor believes that something has changed."

"How so?"

"This last scene looked sloppy and lacked the care and attention to detail this time around. She hypothesized that either this was an entirely different person this time or the person from the earlier scenes was extremely rushed or stressed this time around."

Before Chris could respond intelligently, he saw another woman greet his high school chum and walk through his front door. He was slightly embarrassed because he couldn't shut his mouth. He wasn't the only one who watched the woman make her way towards where he was standing. She was wearing a short but tastefully cut black dress with pearls around her neck. She wore her hair long and straight. She donned enough eye shadow to highlight the darkness in her brown eyes. There were a pair of diamond stud earrings in each ear and her watch gleamed in the morning sunlight shining through Chris' windows.

Roxanne Sanchez hugged Chris tightly before she said her hello.

He gathered himself the best he could and introduced this splendid looking woman to his partner. They greeted one another with a professional handshake.

Blue must have felt the heat between his partner and the latest entry in an overly crowded room. "I should go. I'll see you later, Chris. Turn you phone on."

"I will." He said to Blue yet never took his eyes off of Roxanne. At this moment no one else existed in this room. Only one other woman had ever garnered his undivided attention like this before. And it wasn't his ex-wife who they were going to bury a short time from now. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"If I'm making you uncomfortable—"

"No, of course not, Roxanne," Chris grabbed her hand almost as a reflex. He then gave it a squeezed. "I want you to stay. I _need_ you to stay; I just thought after we'd said our goodbyes on the phone the other night after you informed me of Erica's discovery that I might not see you again."

"Why would you think such a thing?"

"You had concluded your investigation." He lowered his voice again. "You found Erica."

Roxanne looked at her heels. "I felt the need to pay my respects to Denise. "She lifted her chin. Her eyes were so dark yet so amazing. It was like he was seeing them...seeing _her_ for the very first time. "I knew your ex-wife only for a short time, but I respected her... _liked_ her even. Will you be burying both of them today?"

"Yea," Chris gave his rapidly filling up house a once over. "I tried to think of her family, you know, having to take off from work twice in a very short time frame. Denise was born and spent all of her youth in Tennessee. Most of these folks had to make anywhere from a four to six hour drive here into Atlanta to attend their funerals."

"Sure, that was very thoughtful of you."

"Look, Roxanne," Chris finally realized he was still holding on to her hand. He let it go, but she only smiled and held his instead. "I never fully thanked you for finding Erica for us. You honored Denise."

"No...don't thank me, Chris." Roxanne's eyes lost some of its brilliance. She was a professional investigator again...hard...and unrelenting. "I did my job. I gave my word to the two of you to bring Erica home again." She took a full step towards him and whispered in his ear so that no one else would hear her words. "I am _still_ doing my job, Chris. Erica's killer has yet to be apprehended. And have the APD said anything to you about whether Denise was alone when she jumped out of her window?"

It was a curious question but one that he had asked himself actually. He passed on what the APD told him: They were investigating any and all angles of what surrounded the final hours and minutes before Denise Prince's death. They were certain that it was a suicide. But someone had to drive Denise downstate when she found Chris and Angel alone in that hotel room. Chris was still trying to recover from her latest verbal assault and emotional outbreak when he finally peered out of his door—to see only the taillights of the car she'd ridden in speeding off in a pile of dust and burned rubber.

Chris thanked Roxanne again and they finally let go of each other's hand. He also thanked her a second time for coming to his home and paying her respects.

"You don't get it do you?" She folded her arms. "I had to come here today. I had to see for myself if you were okay." She turned her head ever slightly to the left away from most of the crowd...Chris following her gaze to the corner of his dining room that approached his bedroom. He had a sketch of Hoshi Givens sitting at nearly an impossible angle for anyone standing where Roxanne stood to see it. "What a lovely portrait," She said and he had to follow her over to where it was. Roxanne ran her manicured fingernail underneath Hoshi's even darker eyes and around the curve of her thin lips. "There is no doubt she was a beautiful woman—with a hint of Asian features."

"Hoshi's father was from Singapore and her mother was from Malaysia. Hoshi was born here in the states."

"The texture of the canvas is very smooth. The background colors the artist chose blend in especially well with her skin tone." She took her eye off of the drawing long enough to look into his eyes. " _You're_ the artist aren't you, Chris?"

Chris shifted his weight. He was as uncomfortable with this area of conversation as Tabitha Blue had been on social levels minutes ago. "She was..." He tried and failed to keep emotion out of his response. _Damn, does the pain of losing you ever go away, Hoshi_? Roxanne, you should meet Hoshi Givens. She died in an accident many years ago soon after the two of us became engaged."

Accident was a slight proclamation of what truly happened to his first true love.

Hoshi had wrapped her Audi around a poll 30 minutes after a heated parent-teacher conference at the elementary school where she taught third grade. The parent had cursed her and threatened to inflict bodily harm on her if his son's grades didn't magically rise over the remainder of the semester. Special Agent Christopher Prince would have called himself a bold faced liar if he claimed there wasn't times during his career that he wanted to use his badge and his resources...to engage in behavior that ventured outside the law.

The man who helped aid in the death of his beloved came closest to witnessing that _behavior_ first hand.

He never liked to talk about how Hoshi had died...or that his father was taken from him in an automotive incident as well...killed by a drunk driver while he was returning home from duty.

Besides I know there is enough death here today without me digging up graves from the past.

"You must have loved her deeply."

"I did." And Chris unclutched his fist as he admitted as much to Roxanne.

"I can tell." Roxanne said. "I see how much attention to detail you paid when you drew her. The texture of the canvas as I mentioned before, the hues and colors that you chose. No matter how still she may have sat, the areas around her mouth and eyes wouldn't have been the same each day you went back to work on her portrait. Some of your strokes were generated from _memory_." And then she faced him down. "And I know love in a man's eyes when I see it."

"Do you?"

Now it was Roxanne's turn to whither under the fire of his gaze. Two more guests walked up to Chris and greeted him warmly. He acknowledged them one at a time and returned his attention to Roxanne after they moved on to other family members.

After some of people in his house had begun to file out Roxanne said: "I also came today to speak with you about another matter. It's important."

"I'm listening."

"It's about your friend. There is something that you should know about Dr. Hicks Dupree—"

"Angel?" Chris asked. "How do you know her?"

Before Roxanne could answer his question Chris noticed a hush over the remaining crowd as his high school bud ushers someone of his own race into Chris' home.

Angel had arrived.

The crowd parted like the red sea in that old Bible story as she limped past them in route to reaching him. Chris could hear all of the hateful mutterings and comments and sure that his childhood friend could hear them loud and clear.

Rumors could be a vicious thing. Lies were worse still. Chris had seen his name attached to both before. Now he knew that despite all of the help she'd been giving the bureau, that Angel was being persecuted in the court of public opinion for her brief involvement in Pandora.

And now Roxanne Sanchez, a woman who otherwise fascinated him like know woman had since Hoshi Givens, was going to join in with the persecutors for one reason or another. And that angered him some.

"Christopher," Angel hugged him fiercely. She was wearing a cream button up blouse with a knee length black skirt and flats. Heels only tired her leg out faster. She reeked of a beer keg. _She was off duty_ , he told himself, _and she had been there for me when I told her the entire_ _truth about Keaton's kidnapping of me all those years ago_. She turned to Roxanne and the younger woman's gaze would have charred though Angel if only Roxanne had an igniter.

Angel must have noticed the bad vibes reverberating off of Roxanne. "Have we met?"

"My name is Roxanne Sanchez."

Angel nodded. "The Private Investigator," Angel reached out her hand but Roxanne folded one arm across the other and stood on her heels. "And yes...I think we have met before actually. Your name rang a bell with me when Christopher mentioned you before." Angel folded her own arms and stood her ground preparing for whatever sparring came next. "Once again, Roxanne, I'm very sorry that your sister's... _case_ ended the way that it did."

Roxanne said: "And once again you refuse to take any responsibility for your part in her demise." She exhaled audibly through her nostrils. "Listen, I don't want to discuss my sister with you, not here."

"Sister," Chris asked. "What are you two talking about?"

Roxanne glared at Angel a moment longer. "Why don't you answer your friend's question, _Doctor_?" She made the last word as if she had cursed her. "Why don't you answer all of his questions, even the ones he doesn't know he has for you yet. In speaking of questions, Doctor, how is your husband?"

"My husband is my business and none of yours."

Angel and Roxanne engaged in an endless game of stare down until Roxanne seemed to have enough, said her goodbye to Chris and turned to leave them where they stood.

"What in the hell was all of that about?" He asked Angel after Roxanne showed herself out.

Angel frowned. "It's complicated."

"Try me, Doc, you and I have done complicated before."

"You're new friend is the younger sister of Maria Sanchez."

Chris searched his professional memory banks for the file with that name located inside of it. _Shit_. "Sanchez." He felt his hairless brow rising on his forehead. "The female serial killer you aided the bureau in capturing a few years back?"

"One and the same," Angel replied. "And 'bringing her in' might be the greatest understatement you make this year, Christopher. You don't know how I damned wish that the case would have ended far simpler...and less messy than it actually did."

"Alright," Chris said after he thought about it at a deeper level. "Maria Sanchez did die under controversial circumstances while in the bureau's custody."

"She did," Angel told him. And Angel made a point to stare long and hard at his front door where Roxanne Sanchez had showed herself out. "And I'm sure that she blames most of it on me because ultimately, I was the one who talked Maria into surrendering herself over to the FBI."
Xavier

**Evolution Baptist Church (Cafeteria's Bathroom), 20** th **Day**

Too much ginger ale has that effect on you, Bro.

Xavier Prince followed his older brother into the cafeteria's bathroom and locked the door behind him. There were two 'out of order' signs and a plain clothed Peacekeeper between the two brothers and Denise's family and friends who were dining on the far side of the building. A House in Chains Number One couldn't help but grin knowing that his disguise had gotten him this far undetected by either friend or foe. He wore clothes two sizes too big, his hair was a chariot of fire and his teeth were on golden pond.

Chris, on the other hand looked good, in fact he was looking more like their father every day. He had gained some weight around his middle, but he was far from unhealthy looking. Xavier was thankful for the extra layer of skin attached to his own nose because this bathroom stank as if hadn't been cleaned in months. He guessed that the cleanliness is close to Godliness didn't apply to a church's bathroom. He kept his distance while Chris handled his business, using the extra time to remove his brim, shades and false facial hair. Hopefully his pimp manner of walking hadn't given him away. A man couldn't change his DNA, his fingerprints or his walk no matter how much he had practiced the night before.

"Xavier?"

"Hello, big brother."

Chris turned his clean shaven head ever so slightly to be sure he wasn't seeing ghosts. "Is that really you? What are you doing here?" Chris scanned the dirty bathroom. "How did you get in here?"

Xavier turned on his shame face. There had been no other way of guaranteeing he'd get to see his brother; even wearing the disguise. "I've been riding with you all along."

"There was a bit of delay when the cars lined up to drive to the church. I don't remember seeing you get in either family car."

"You're hearing me, Chris, but you're not _listening_." Xavier said slowly, letting the other man catch up to his meaning. "Like I said before, I rode in the hertz with you all along."

"Don't tell me you were in the goddamn casket, Xavier," Chris paced within a small area of space. And then he let out a burst of uncontrollable laughter. "You know shit like that lowers our chance of getting into heaven."

Xavier laughed with his brother—stopping long enough to put his ear to the door, unnecessarily listening for anyone coming. The Circle had worked out an arrangement with the funeral home and had securely...and respectfully buried Denise in the plot that she and Chris had picked out when they were still married. The face and the upper torso that his brother and everyone else saw earlier inside the church was a finely detailed mannequin. Grace Edwards had contracted the work out to several individuals who specialized in that kind of thing and the three men had worked on the model from the time the news had broken of Denise's unfortunate demise.

Xavier then told Chris that he had been smuggled into the casket when Denise's actual body had been removed. Chris frowned at that. The younger brother reminded him that desperate times dictated just as desperate measures.

"I had to see you, Chris."

The older brother's facial expression bounced from anger to disbelief to hardened resolve then back again.

"All of this trouble that you went through," Chris said. "I appreciate you coming here."

"It was a beautiful ceremony. Denise and Erica would have been pleased with how you have honored their memories." He feigned a punch to his brother's gut. "Look at you, Bro; you've put on a few pounds."

As soon as he said it, Xavier wished he could have taken his sentiment back. _I see that_ _you've become sensitive about the weight thing_. "It's been a long time."

"It has been too long, Xavier."

They finally embraced as tears stung at the corners of Xavier's eyes. When they released one another the younger brother could tell that his older sibling shared his sentiment.

"Xavier, you know what all this reminds me of?"

Xavier didn't and told his brother so as he pulled a toothpick from his plastic bag and stuck it in his mouth.

"I should have attended your mother's funeral. The woman took me in...she accepted me when she didn't have to. In the little time that the four of us lived under her roof she always treated me as if I were her biological child." It was Chris' turn to look shamefaced. "Yet, I wouldn't attend her funeral. I came to all the other outside stuff but—"

"My mother loved you, Chris." Xavier said. "She told me that on her deathbed. But you were only 14 years old, man, and you'd lost your own mom four years earlier. And then we both knew you had to deal with our dad's situation between our mothers. And finally you were abducted by Louis Keaton. She understood all of your anger and frustration...and confusion. She understood, Chris and so did I."

They let the past; the silence and the stench of the bathroom have their own separate and collective moments.

Chris broke the hush by saying: "After all we've been through together; it hurts me to know that we are on the opposite sides of the fence on this one."

Xavier pushed the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue. "Are you absolutely sure about that?" Xavier raised his brows and scratched his sideburns. "I think we are a lot closer on the issues at hand than you think, Bro. I know first and foremost that we both want the safe return of Keaton's kidnapping victims. Look Chris, is there anything you can tell me on that front without you compromising yourself or your people within the FBI?"

Chris shook his shaven head. "No, not really; and if Grace Edwards is still a House in Chains Intelligence Coordinator or whatever title you've given her, then you already know what I know—maybe more."

"Alright then, let's say for arguments sake that both of our organizations share some of the same theories."

"About what,"

"Your people believe that Louis Keaton is the answer to today's glaring question."

"We both know that he is."

"Well then the next obvious question is this," Xavier said. "Is how long do we have to find him before he begins to molest these children?"

"I would say that day soon approaches." Chris shared Angel's running theories about where she thought Keaton was from various aspects of his thought processes without mentioning her specifically by name.

"I'm inclined to be more concerned with Serena Tennyson's influence over him. We both know that that woman is more than capable and willing to pull strings to get what she wants."

"Yea, I know that. I also know that if history is to repeat itself, she will order these children killed...the same exact way that the Caretaker had those poor boys who had been abducted along with me killed if she feels Keaton's position and his mission is compromised in any way."

"Yea," Xavier couldn't mask his discomfort with the direction this conversation had drifted towards. "Yea, I guess you would know a little something about that, Chris."

"I would." Chris shook his head while he said it though. _You're stronger than you give yourself credit for, Bro. You may not have been molested by Keaton, but no child was more_ _abused during your time with him_. "Xavier, look, tell me that you're not going to do anything stupid are you?"

Xavier stood flatfooted and pulled the toothpick out of his mouth. "I hope that you don't believe that using the Peacekeepers to defend a community of people from of our race against an extreme criminal element or preparing ourselves to engage Pandora if and when the time calls us to bear arms as _stupid_ then I guess so."

"And what if Thomas Pepper produces evidence and tells our people a part or all of the three things that they want to know the most."

"Pepper is acting on the request of our former mayor, a woman who you should now know was my Number Two in the Circle, and a respected member of our House. The reporter's findings are sure to weigh heavily on my decisions moving forward."

"What are you hoping to accomplish, Xavier?"

"You know, Chris, I understand better than most what has transpired in your personal life over the past few days and weeks." Xavier said in a matter of fact tone. "I just hope that you haven't forgotten the 411 attacks. You were there from what I'm told. You and I both were targeted. Pandora massacred our people. Now Serena has unleashed an unstable man to once again to kidnap our children. Her actions cannot go unanswered." Xavier lowered his voice to barely above a hiss. "I may not be the leader that our father was—I may not even be the leader that _you_ would have been, but Serena's crimes will not go unpunished. I can promise you that."

"You're bluffing, Xavier, I know you." Chris said carefully. "You won't order any type of true offensive against Pandora." Instead of allowing himself to waste precious time and energy getting angry, Xavier told his older brother: "I hope my enemies mistake my finesse as weakness as well, Big Brother. I guess you slept through our capture of those twins who were terrorizing some of the neighborhood stores, or our victory at Calhoun Prison and maybe...just maybe you've already forgotten the Peacekeeper's incursion and liberation of Carver."

"Don't talk to me about beating up damned thugs, drug dealers and gang bangers."

Xavier raised his voice a tone. "I didn't see you sacrificing people to better the situations in any of those places."

"Xavier, when you are talking about taking on Pandora head on you are speaking about unleashing collateral effects that are potentially beyond anything that we have ever seen before."

"And by saying that, I assume that you believe that all of the losses, all of the casualties will belong to a House in Chains. Do you believe that only People of Color will die in any conflict?"

"Serena has nearly unlimited resources." Chris planted his fist on his hips in exasperation. "Hell, I belong to a licensed government agency and we're struggling to match her blow for blow."

Xavier cracked a disingenuous smile. "I'd be inclined to believe that none of your concern about all of this is about my strategy, resources or manpower. You're not concerned about a House in Chains...it's all about _me_. My big brother doesn't think I'm up for the challenge."

"Xavier—"

" _Do you_ ,"

Chris said, "My overriding concern is that you have failed to see a no-win scenario when it is flashing all of the warning signs in front of your face."

Xavier snorted. "Then you might want to tell your bureau friends to do their damned jobs, my man. Perhaps we will all be spared knowing whether I am over my head or not."

After a tense silence Chris said: "And I want you to know something, Xavier,"

"What's that?"

"We _are_ on the same side."

"Just like always," Xavier replied in a more relaxed tone. "And sometimes I feel as if it seems as if it is never at all."

"I guess it's another day in the life and times of the Prince Brothers."

They embraced again. Xavier can't kill the thought that it will be a great deal longer before they see one another again. For the first time since he entered this bathroom, Xavier felt the urge to smoke a cigarette.

"Watch your back, Little Brother." Chris' warm breath filled Xavier's ear. "I especially want you to be careful around Quincy Morgan. You must never trust him."

"I don't." Xavier responded. "And Chris, I know how you feel about Angel. I know how much her friendship has meant to you over the years. I've always liked her—more than she thinks I do. I certainly respect her work from one professional to another, but I'm hearing troublesome things on my end—"

"I got you; I'll handle Angel."

Xavier excused himself as he walked past Chris to the mirror. He methodically reattaches all of his makeup and attachments, unlocked the door and turned back to his brother before he opened it fully. "I've always wanted to ask you something I just never could figure out whether I should?"

"Shoot,"

"It's not my business."

"But you should ask it anyway, Xavier? We are each other's keeper."

A beautiful instrumental piece begins to pipe in the room through the speakers that Xavier can't see. It sounded faintly familiar. "Yes, I guess we are each other's keeper at that." He said, his voice sounded muffled underneath the skin of the fake nose. "I know very few things in my time in this world, but I do know that you loved Hoshi Givens with all of your heart and soul. I also know for a fact that she's the only woman that you've truly _ever_ loved including the poor troubled soul we just buried." Xavier rubbed his lower lip in a faint attempt to mask that it was trembling as he spoke. "Was how you felt about her then, the memory of your love; was it enough to overcome losing her in all of the years that have passed since?"

"It was." Chris Prince did not hesitate. "It _is_."

Xavier stood in his stance long enough to listen to the melody in its entirety. After a time he opened his eyes and realized he had tears in them and he felt the biggest smile of satisfaction lighting up his dark face. Chris mirrored his look as well. "That was a wonderful composition wasn't it, Bro?" I'm sure somebody out in that cafeteria has that track or the CD it came from on hand, how about doing me a big favor and getting me the name of the artist." Xavier said, punched a cigarette out the pack, and thought the better of it for a dozens of good reasons. "I've been dreaming about Dad every night since I was released from Calhoun. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat. I never remember what the dreams are about, but I know that he's always in them and he's... _alive_ , Chris. He's always alive and he's trying to tell me something." He lowered his eyes. "I have to admit the whole thing scares the hell out of me. I don't know what it all means. I do know that if I die before you do I want to go listening to something as beautiful as what we just heard."

"Of course I would, Xavier, I just wonder what ways we'll be listening to music on all those decades from now." Chris said in a suggestive tone that Xavier caught immediately. "And I guess it's comforting for me to know that some things don't change with you like your love of instrumental music and your craving for the smokes."

"I know...they'll kill me yet...the smokes I mean."

"Did I ever tell you thank you for saving my life all of those years ago when you saw me walking past our house?"

"You tell me every chance you get, Chris." Xavier matched his brother's serious tone. "Perhaps you'll get to return the favor someday...don't be late." Xavier began to slip out of the bathroom door into the hall that led the activity of the cafeteria. "I'll see you around."

Xavier's people get him out through a secret, looping, preordained matrix of a route. It was troubling, tiring, it was time consuming and by an hour's end, completely successful.

Another hour later he is standing at a location not of his choosing on the other side of town and finds himself lighting his third cigarette in the past 20 minutes. He exhales...and coughs. _My God, these things will kill eventually kill me won't they_?

Xavier Prince hoped to sleep dreamlessly tonight and die of lung cancer one day many years from now.

_Just let it be cancer_ , he thought, _Chris will play that beautiful song for me at my funeral 30 years from now when I die of cancer._
Seth

**New South Cemetery, 20** th **Day**

Why won't you answer my phone calls, Angel?

Dr. Seth Dupree clicked his cell phone off, rubbed the fingers of his left hand over the tombstone of Denise Prince and searched the heavens above for answers. So far the power's at be had refused to answer him at all.

He'd waited patiently for Erica's funeral procession to disband before he'd paid his own private respects to both women. He couldn't run the risk of one of the triage center's staff spotting him here and asking questions that he dared not respond to: When was the last time he had seen Denise alive? When was the last time he'd spoken to her? Besides he knew her ex-husband made his living off of being a professional investigator. He had attended both burials of course. So far the local papers were calling Denise's death for what it really was—a suicide. But Seth knew that most figured that she was not alone when she threw herself out of that window. There was no need for him to chance any legal involvement in this.

The Gray man exhaled a long breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He was thankful for that blessing at least. The prevailing winds had carried the brushfire odors well away from the city this afternoon.

"Your wife is responsible for all of this and so much more, Doctor."

Seth darted around to put a face to the voice of the stranger who had walked up on him so mutely. "What was that? Do I know you, Miss?"

Seth found himself quickly over being startled and struggling not to stare at this stunningly beautiful woman. She was a darker skinned, curvy Latino who was wearing a short but tastefully cut black dress, stud earrings, pearl necklace, and a watch on her wrist. She wore her hair long and straight and Seth couldn't shake the feeling that he'd met her somewhere before.

"I know you," She said, her accent only betraying the slightest hint of a Puerto Rican or Dominican ancestry. "Your name is Dr. Seth Dupree. You live a nearly perfect life. You are one this region's most renowned surgeons. You are very well respected by your professional colleagues and those who know you through your community. From time to time your friends have referred to you as 'The Gray Man' for your eye color, strands of gray in your hair and the attire you've worn over the years. I'm interesting in you for the reason your life is _not_ so perfect—your marriage to another doctor, Angel Hicks-Dupree."

"What could you possibly want with me or my wife? Are you some kind of investigator? "

"Yea, s _ome_ kind...that describes me quite well actually." She said and peered past a group of trees to their left. "I know that two funerals are taking place at this very moment over there for two separate teen aged boys who perished earlier this week from the injuries they suffered during the 411 attacks."

Seth shifted his weight and didn't understand why. He and Angel were still in Macon when Pandora launched its offensive against targets here in the city. Seth was finding himself, despite this woman's beauty, quickly tiring of her company and her monologue. "Sorry. I hadn't scanned the local headlines this morning."

"No problem, Doctor, I thought that I would make you aware of the facts." She looked downwards at Denise's headstone. She kneeled long enough to mutter a prayer and crossed herself. When she opened her eyes again they appeared darker and more focused than they were even before she had closed them. "You've been preoccupied with other things—today it was the burial of Denise Prince and her daughter Erica Lovings."

"How do you know all of this?" Seth heard his own voice raising. Whether it was from anger or fear he could not say.

"Are you absolutely sure you don't know who I am, Doctor? Why don't you take another look?"

Seth does just that. And he takes a second...and third a look as well, until...

"I _do_ know you. You were sitting in a wrecked car downstate. You were parked near where Denise and I were outside of this hotel where Angel and Chris Prince were." And then he remembered what the dead woman had told him before their next to last night together inside her apartment went to hell. The divorced couple had hired a private investigator—A Roxanne Sanchez to find Denise's missing daughter.

Seth told the woman standing next to Denise Prince's grave his hypothesis.

She said: "You are correct, Doctor. Now let me let you in on some things that you may not be aware of."

Roxanne Sanchez gave him the short version of her dealings with a fugitive from both Pandora and the FBI named Joseph Champion. She told him that this Champion fellow and Seth's wife, Angel, were sleeping together the night before the FBI recruited her to join them here in Atlanta. She spoke as if every sentence was being recorded during a deposition. She had dismissed emotion from the equation and just presented the facts—at least as she saw them, to Seth. This mole—as Champion had referred to himself, possibly...quite possibly was involved in the murder of Erica Lovings. Roxanne Sanchez couldn't answer why he would murder her but went on to say that Champion was far more mixed up in the overall scope of what was going on within the sphere of influence of Pandora as well.

She then reminded him of Angel's previous dealings and supposed therapy sessions with Louis Keaton. And if the Gray man wasn't totally caught up with current events, Keaton was the monster that everyone in the free world believed was recently responsible for kidnappings of at least six Black children here in the city.

As painfully as it was for Seth to admit, this woman knew far too many facts to making all of this up. "So are you going to base your next move simply on the word of a fugitive? I don't quite understand all of this."

"It's no mere coincidence that the FBI snagged your wife as soon as all of this went down. Whether you see it or not—whether _she_ sees it or not, they suspect her too to some degree or another. They were smart to keep her close. She's involved at some level. I would bet my life on it."

"Why do you care so much?" He ran his hand along the gravel of Denise's tombstone again. It was a fine piece of structural design. "You found Erica in Carver. You did as you promised Denise you would do. Your job is done here."

Roxanne got in his face. "Your wife is responsible for the death of my sister. She's at least partly responsible for those two funerals over there that I pointed out to you a few minutes ago. Two more funerals for women who died during the Siege of the Fox Theatre will be held later on today as well."

"I'm no lawyer, Roxanne," Seth offered cautiously. "But I see you basing a lot of what you think you know on a ton of circumstantial evidence at best."

"Call it what you will, Doctor." Roxanne backed off just a little. "I do know for a fact that everything that your wife touches ends up in disaster. Lie to me and tell me that you haven't thought once about what Angel said to Denise in that hotel room that finally pushed an already unstable woman over the edge." Roxanne took her turn at caressing Denise's tombstone. "Now I won't lie. I didn't know Denise very well or very long. I know enough to speculate that she was mentally and emotionally vulnerable to say the least. So I'm not the only one who saw Denise's outbursts. But your wife deals with these types of personality's everyday of her life. She should have known what not to say or do to set this woman off on her final path of self-destruction."

The Gray man had indeed wondered what was said or done when Denise had walked into Chris' hotel room. Denise had never said. He even thought about the worst case scenario: That somehow Denise had walked in on his wife and her ex-husband in bed together. Angel had told him about her single sexual escapade with Chris before they were married. She had told Seth that it was a half product of a lifetime of curiosity, while the rest was the result of carry over emotion of the sudden death of Chris' then fiancé.

_There is a ton of emotion, most of it negative, in Chris' life right now. Could history have repeated itself? What if Angel had 'comforted' him some more just as he and Denise had arrived?_ Seth felt his jaws reddening. Perhaps they would christen him the Red Man soon.

"So what are you going to do now, Roxanne? Are you on some type of vindication mission? Are you going to right all of my wife's wrongs?"

Roxanne would not look him in his gray eyes for the first time. "I didn't come here to seek your permission, Doctor. You should consider this short conversation between us as a courtesy call only."

"What does that supposed to mean, Roxanne?"

"Your wife is killing people, Doctor. Maybe she isn't doing it by any of the traditional means, but she is causing their deaths all the same."

"What are you going to _do_?" Seth felt himself biting his bottom lip.

"Finding a missing person is the absolute worse job that any investigator can be tasked with doing. Too often in the past, I've been asked to inform a parent, or a child, a sibling, or a lover that I couldn't find the one in their life who had gone missing, or if I did...that I found this person of their profound interest dead. I don't think that there is anything more difficult than telling someone that their beloved is never coming home again."

Seth nodded in understanding for two reasons. The first obvious one is he'd been present when the news broke that his older brother and Erica Lovings were both were found dead and the anguish thereafter that occurred for all involved.

And then the second reason caused him to say to Roxanne: "I understand that responsibility as well, Roxanne." He said calmly. "I've often had to reveal a terrible diagnosis to a patient's family after surgery had been completed. I've had patients die on my table under my care."

Roxanne looked away, frowned and then found his gray eyes again with her dark ones. "Then you should know that coming to my decision about Angel wasn't an easy one."

"What—"

"I'm informing you here and now that you're loved one is never coming home again, Doctor. And I do mean _never._ Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree deserves to die for all of the pain and misery and death that she's caused. And I mean to kill her as soon as I find her again before she can inflict more."

"I can't let you do that—I'll warn her. I'll get the authorities involved." Seth plucked his cell phone out of his pocket but seemed to go all thumbs while trying to dial up the combination to 911. And then he fumbled it, the phone landing in a bed of yellow roses near his shoes. _Damn_ _you man, you're a surgeon for Christ sakes_. He had saved lives with these hands. Why couldn't he grasp this damned phone and possibly save the most precious life of all that personally mattered to him.

"I don't think that you mean that at all, Doctor. I don't you will call the police. You can't go to Chris Prince because you're very presence here opens you up to questions that you are not prepared to answer." Roxanne said. "And honestly, Doctor, I think that deep down in your soul you know that I'm right about this. You may even want to help me find her. Angel needs to be put out of all of our miseries."

He neither says anything nor makes a movement to retrieve his phone. Roxanne must have taken this as a sign that it was time for her to move on alone. She turned away from him without looking back. The Gray man doesn't move to stop her.

The wind has shifted and the burning smell had returned almost instantaneously. It nearly engulfs his senses. _Is this what Hell smells like? Maybe I'm the one who died the other night? Maybe I've already died and went to Hell already for daring to consider this stranger's offer as a viable solution to anything._

He looked around him. He was the only one alive in this dreaded place. At least these dead had some semblance of peace that he did not. He ran his fingernails across Denise's tombstone again...and again...until his nails had broken and bled from the pressure he'd put on them. The gravel had cut into the sensitive skin at the tips of his fingers _. I couldn't save you_ , _Denise._ And then his memory cut into his soul, injuring it far worse than the gravel had hurt his fingers _. I couldn't save you Antoinette...or Clinton...or Sam. And it doesn't look as if I'm going to save you from your life either Pam._

And Seth then decided that perhaps 'saving others' wasn't his true calling.

Maybe doing quite the opposite...was where his destiny lay from this point moving forward.

Angel had denied him a simple courtesy by refusing to answer or return his phone calls.

Angel had dishonored her wedding vows time and again by sleeping with other men.

Angel had cast him aside for her one true love: Her adoration for her drinking.

Roxanne Sanchez had walked nearly out of site to where her wrecked car was double parked when she finally heard him calling out to her.

"Wait, Roxanne," Seth yelled so she would not leave. And after he had recovered from his sprint and was standing behind her next to her Honda. "I'm going to spend the rest of my life regretting my decision right now. I know that a higher power will make sure I spend an eternity regretting it as well." Dr. Seth Dupree told the dark eyed woman standing next to her car. "But if you are going to truly kill my wife...then I should be there at the end. Let me come with you."
Episode 5 Zero Hour 

#  Chapter Thirteen

You're going to hate me for saying this, Lisa. There is something screwed up in the head of that little boy of yours. You ever thought about getting him some professional help?

-Duncan Clarkston, in a private conversation with Hugh Keaton's mother Lisa Healy, in 1960
Louis

**Shady Glenn Motel; New Smyrna, Georgia, 22** nd **Day**

He was a bad boy having a party.

And when he was right, _really_ right, no one had ever partied harder.

He was Aristotle, he was Fred Astaire _and_ Ginger Rogers, and he was Michael Jordan on the basketball floor.

And he was starting to feel _really_ right again. And he wasn't done yet.

An hour ago, Louis Keaton snatched Keven Mathis off the corner of Mitchell St. and Baker Court as the boy had walked out of one of the mom and pop convenient stores up there. He'd driven the F150 nearly up the front door and yanked the 13 year old right under those poor saps noses without being seen. He plucked the boy off the dirty asphalt underneath the thick haze the way a killer whale throws all of its tons on a sheet of ice to nab a seal in Antarctica. The way an old man pluck's a gray strand of nose hair out of his nostril when he thinks the old lady ain't looking.

He'd gotten him, but it had turned out that this kid wasn't his _cleanest_ catch—that's for damned sure.

Young Keven liked his treats and that wasn't a lie. His pockets were loaded with peanut butter cups, taffy, sticks of Bubble Yum, and a min can of Mountain Dew if Louis needed proof. _This kid should weigh 400 pounds. He may_ have _if we waited another week to grab him for sure._ Louis finally got the F150 in gear and going again, controlling his speed as he drove the old girl down the raggedy street. He looked the part of a normal citizen, no different than any other man whose wife or girlfriend had sent him on a quick run to pick up something from the store.

He got his prize back to the sanctuary at last. Once inside, Louis rubbed the boy's chin and jaw. Young Keven had the rough brown skin that reminded the older man of the bark of the sycamore trees back home in Memphis. When Louis threw Kevin into one of the closets, the handling that all knew recruits got until they settled down, all of the boy's treats came spilling out of his pockets and on to the floor.

Again, this one was far from a perfect catch. He wasn't Moses Jackson. He damned sure wasn't Christopher Prince reincarnated. _Yet, he will have to do._ He _would_ have to do indeed.

Louis gagged him, roped his hands behind his back. The boy fussed into the electric tape covering his mouth until the little booger cried himself to sleep at last.

Young Keven wasn't the _only_ one crying in the room. _We are such a pussy._ Aloud Louis Keaton said: "I can't do this...I _won't_ do this anymore." He said it out loud to separate his private thoughts from that other part of him. His personal voice was growing more urgent. "I'll run away from here. I'll start over somewhere else. I won't let Serena Tennyson or her people find me."

_Are we all shook_ up? Louis heard the other's voice asking him, Hugh's voice dripped with sarcasm. The other's voices loud and clear enough now in Louis' ears to make him think that he himself had vocalized it; _Let us go._ We _can do this alone. Thanks for coming. We can take it from here._

Louis slid himself into the opposite corner of the room until the brick wall greeted him from behind, halting his retreat. "No. Why don't you go away? I don't need you. Nobody needs you here, Hugh. Just leave me alone."

We're wasting time, idiot. And we've waited long enough. Hurry...it's time to take what is rightfully ours. There are six other boys here in the sanctuary. It's like its Christmas Eve all over again and we're going to open one present early. Hurry...the Dragon Lady will be here soon. Serena will come to spoil all our fun

Louis began to slowly inch himself back across the floor to where the boy lay still sleeping. The sound of his boots sliding along the hard floor sounded like sandpaper and caused him to wince and grit his teeth. It was a glorious noise. It had drowned out Hugh, at least for the moment.

Young Kevin must have sensed what danger he was in. The boy swam up out of his nap and began jerking about in his bondage like someone suffering from a seizure. The duct tape continued to muzzle his cries. The security detail that had been assigned to accompany Louis and the other boys had become real lax over the past few days with all of the inactivity and endless waiting. _We can always count on the pitfalls of human nature helping us out can't We?_ They didn't even hear Louis when he'd driven up. The two of them were either napping themselves or maybe they were playing on their phones. _It would feel so right_. Louis ran his right hand over Kevin's coarse mane of hair, down the nape of his neck, followed the slightest curve of the boy's back...until he'd reached lower...

Louis cried again after it was all over.

There was a smoky breeze flowing in from the window. Despite the stench Louis opened it as far as it would let him so that the air would help dry his tears. "I promised I wouldn't hurt any of you." He apologized to boy who had cried himself to sleep once again. "I had given my word to myself that I wouldn't touch any of you yet."

_Well, once a liar, always a liar._ Hugh said to him. _And yet, keeping promises was never Our specialty was it? Man that was wonderful. They are right when they say that it is just like riding a bike...that you never truly forget how. It's been so long...too damned long. We got a cigarette? Maybe we could bum a Newport off of Xavier Prince?_

Louis heard the sound of unabated laughter.

He wasn't entirely sure anymore whether it was his own physical merriment...or the glee of the _other_ from some deranged area of his mind _._

"I tried." Louis Keaton buried his wrinkled face in his hands. He glanced out of the window into a full moon's light, his resolve now broken, his energy spent.

_We knew that how we lacked the courage to this through to the end. We knew this day would come again._ The other's voice cracked in hesitation for an instant. _We always have._

"You've never forgiven me have you, Hugh?" Louis asked the question.

Forgive Us...why should We do that.

"Because I tried to save you," Louis fought back a fresh round of tears. Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree had told him long ago that this day of _self-_ reckoning would finally come. "I was just a little boy myself, Hugh, and I did everything that I could to save you. Don't you remember?"

Hugh Keaton and Louis Pope had hit it off almost from the first cloudy Memphis day that they'd met. They couldn't be more on the opposite end of the physical scale: Hugh was husky for his age, built like a bump on a log. Louis stretched out long and lean like a greyhound and pale from not going outside much before he'd met Hugh.

They were the two peas in the preverbal pod to say the least.

They would play together from sunrise to sunset. Hugh and Louis would run around nearly dehydrating in the blazing heat of the late afternoon...until the evening thunderstorms or the _pop_ of the street lights churning to life chased them indoors only to start the process towards the next day's renewal of activities.

By time the season had called out for bummers, calf length boots and Thanksgiving turkeys to awaken from their yearlong slumber...a tearful Hugh had let his best friend in the whole world in on his little dirty family secret. Hugh had remembered not planning to tell him. It was something that just kind of fell out of his mouth one quiet night before Louis' parents called him in for supper. The other boy cried at the horror of what Hugh had told him about him and Templeton's special Uncle to nephew relationship. There was a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella of company and fellowship.

Even Louis Pope knew this to be true.

After the telling of the tale had concluded itself, Louis dried his eyes at last and showed the steady resolve of a young man that he would never live to become.

Louis Pope got his long lanky legs beneath him and headed for home _before_ his parents called him this night. Hugh had instantly regretted telling him about Uncle Templeton. Louis had to think that he was some type of freak. Only bad kids were molested by their uncles. Louis must have thought that Hugh was either a liar or a pervert. Now Hugh had risked losing his best friend in the world forever because he disclosed this terrible secret to another kid who was powerless to do anything about it anyway.

In all the years that have passed, Hugh Keaton never forgot the look on Louis Pope's face as he stopped in the middle of the street and looked back at him before he left for home that evening.

And he never forgot what he said.

"I'm going to tell my folks what you've told me, Hugh." Louis' smile was a sympathetic one. "You're the best friend that I've ever had. I'm not to let anyone ever hurt you again. I won't leave you behind."

It was the first and last lie that Louis Pope would _ever_ tell his friend Hugh Keaton.

He did leave Hugh—long enough to tell his mom and dad, with a 12 year's attention to detail, what his friend Hugh Keaton had told him was going on in his family's trailer. Over the next few weeks cops from the local sheriff's office would venture out to interview Uncle Templeton or Lisa Healey—Hugh's mom, or Hugh himself. Hugh had never been more encouraged. The boys continued to play every day that the winter weather and the holiday break allowed them. Louis informed Hugh that some police pals of his dad told him that their office was close to making an arrest. They also told his dad that his family's testimony would be vital to _any_ charges sticking against Templeton Healey. Without their testimony, any case otherwise would be Hugh Keaton's word against his uncle. And Templeton had his allies down in the department as well. It scared Hugh—at least a little—that there was a chance that his mom might get prosecuted too. Where would he live if his mom went to jail? But when Louis said that his parents liked him well enough to consider _adopting_ him if the state incarcerated his mom also...Hugh knew with all certainty that his luck and his life were finally going to change for the better.

It was now the morning of Christmas Eve...and the next day would be the greatest Christmas that the boy, Hugh Keaton, would have ever known.

And yet, this same Hugh Keaton awoke Christmas morning to the smell of something burning and he instinctively somehow knew that his fairytale ending was going up in flames as well.

He could _hear_ the fire crackling in the air as if someone were playing a percussion instrument in his ears. Whatever was burning it was very nearby. It was extremely close. He just knew it to be true. Hugh jumped up from out of his bed and sprinted through his uncle's trailer. When he opened the front door everything from directly in from of him due North looked to be as it should have been.

And then he peered over his far left shoulder...to the single family home where Louis Pope and his parents lived.

Their home was engulfed in flames.

Louis screamed aloud as he ran barefooted out in the snow as fast as his plump little legs would carry him. It was no way that anyone inside that burning inferno had got out in time. It was no _freaking_ way.

Hugh fell to his knees in the snow about 20 feet or so from the scene of the fire.

He screamed again.

He cried out for Louis and his parents who were burning inside.

And then he turned up the volume as he screamed...for _himself._ He knew that his great opportunity for escape—his final chance of living a healthy, normal life had gone up in flames with the murder of the Pope family. Hugh remembered what Louis had told him when he said that his family's testimony would be vital to _any_ charges sticking against Templeton Healy.

As three fire trucks rolled in, Louis turned and looked back to the trailer where he had lived. He shook his head violently at that proclamation that had bounced around in his head. For anyone to call what he had going on in that shack of existence _life_ was the cruelest joke of them all. He saw his Uncle Templeton standing in front of the door, an ugly but triumphant smile beginning to play on his thin lips. He flicked a lighter... the flame rising time and again... until the boy could no longer stand to watch. Finally, Hugh's stomach churned and he threw up last night's supper into a pile that bled color into the blandness of the white snow. And even at that distance, even with all of the commotion all around him, Louis could read what mouthed off of his uncle's lips into the frosty air. _Merry Christmas, Nephew. Tonight you will receive your greatest Christmas gift of all. You've earned it_

Uncle Templeton had his gift unwrapped and waiting for him later on that night. And he made his mother sit in on this session as well. The boy had nearly sprung up trouble with the law he spat. She would either watch him fuck her son or she would witness as he _killed_ him for all the hassle he'd drummed up. Templeton kept feeding his special Christmas gift to his beloved nephew night after night after night...for _weeks_ on end.

He told Serena Tennyson that he never knew for certain when the boy who was Hugh Keaton, died during that span. He did know for certain that the Louis persona—what little he still believed to be gentle and decent about this world had been born while he kneeled in his filth of his own vomit that cold Christmas morning. And yet, he was even more convinced that his Uncle's vile personality had wedged its way into his brittle mind as the _new_ Hugh Keaton sometime or the other while he poked him from behind that night. He was about strength through force and manipulation.

And so Serena had heard all she had cared to hear from his lips the other day when she had first visited him and Moses here in the sanctuary. And Oracle had stormed out of there and traveled West with Shooter and a handful of other agents and unleashed a Whirlwind that Memphis would not soon forget. The petite woman dressed all in black shot and killed four former policemen who had long retired to their pensions with knowledge of the Hell that Keaton's uncle had unleashed on that—the holiest of all days all those years earlier.

His uncle Templeton had entered the Pope's home unseen through a back window. He then overwhelmed Louis' father shortly thereafter and beat the man to a pulp. Still enraged, he bonded both parents together at the wrist to two of the dining room chairs. And since they'd been so damned interested in a man's private affairs...then he would let them see firsthand how a Healey handled his business with his nephew. Bound and helpless, the Pope's shared a front row seat and could only watch while Templeton Healey sodomized their son...

And yet, friends and neighbors, the _hell_ of this tale was still on the back burner you might say.

Templeton told Serena—before she killed him—that he remembered pouring gasoline on seemingly every inch of floor space in the Pope's living room for good measure, torching the place and leaving all three behind powerless except to watch...and _burn_ as their home blazed around them.

Keaton still failed to understand why Serena spared his mother—though Oracle forced her to stay and watch as she methodically tortured her brother for nearly 12 hours before killing and eventually burning Templeton Healey's remains until there was nothing left of him but charred bones and memories of an old man begging for his pathetic life between screams of agony—

" _Louis!"_ He was back here in the present again and it was Serena Tennyson screaming at him here in the sanctuary. _"What in the hell is going on here?"_

Danielle Rohm shook him by his shoulders. "Answer her, Louis." She looked at young Kevin lying naked and... _violated_ in a fetal position in the closet. _And now the shit really hits the fan._ "You disobeyed a direct order, Louis. You weren't supposed to...my God, what have you done?"

Louis felt a goofy smile forming on his weathered face just like the one's his Uncle Templeton used to wear when he was being particularly mischievous.

But a molested 13 year boy lying naked in a closet was only the beginning of his troubles late this evening.

Moses Jackson and the other five boys had gone missing.

Serena Tennyson cursed. And then she dialed her cell phone, telling the party on the other end to issue a Code Red. The hostages had escaped and they needed to take appropriate measures to get them back before they were seen by the general public.

The two guards were unaccounted for as well. Louis decided that they either they were out looking for the children or they had decided to try to escape Serena's wraith for allowing this breach of security to happen in the first place.

Serena planted one hand on a slim hip and paced back and forward again to she had returned from where she started. She exhaled audibly. She looked as if were taking all of her self-discipline to hold her temper.

"We agreed that you would wait until I signaled you to initiate physical contact with any of the hostages." She said to him her lecturing tone that she did so well. "You've compromised much of our leveraging position with a House in Chains and the FBI. You're... _lust_ has jeopardized our entire operation here."

He raised his knees to his chest and cocked his head ever slightly left. "I have done _just_ that, Serena. What I have also done is simply raised the stakes. The Rapture alone had grown stale." He said. "Calm down, woman. Sadly, you and I know that Moses Jackson and the others are still virgins. They still have value to you."

The three of them drove up the length of highway that separated the Sanctuary from the outer fringes of the city four times. Rohm drove five to ten miles over the speed limit. Serena stayed on her cell, scanning side streets, alleys, wooded areas and shadowed corners looking for the boys. It was dark once they reached Fulton County and Atlanta's city limits.

Riding shotgun, Louis Keaton got a different perspective of the city that had served as his personal playground of pleasure. This area had become a smorgasbord for pain and suffering and despair since he and Muhammad Clark had last preyed on these sacred grounds. _Still, it is Our Kingdom,_ Keaton thought. _It is our kingdom and our rules. No one, not even Muhammad Clark had done it better than we have._

He relaxed, sitting his hands behind in head and laid back on the seat, smelling the seat's fine leather and the funk fumigating from underneath his arm pits. He stretched out totally, kicking his boots on the seat, perfectly content, perfectly tranquil unlike he'd ever felt in his life. He felt no worries, no stress. He was different somehow. He was _better_.

And his rapid fire changes hadn't gone unnoticed by the Oracle.

She looked back him once...and again just before she clicked her phone to the off position. She then turned her attention to Rohm.

"Make a left turn here at the next intersection."

"Are you sure? I don't think that we should—"

"Do it, Rohm."

He said without being asked his opinion: "Rohm's right, Dragon Lady. We are wasting time." The car screamed past a pack of young men and women of color dressed in khaki suits and sneakers. The Peacekeepers were out in force tonight, casing neighborhoods that the APD dared only to go in with an army in tow.

Serena seemed to consider implications of any rash decisions that she might make. "Alright," She said to Rohm more than to him. "Rohm, get us back to the highway, right away. The only way that those hostages made it nearly this far is if they reached the interstate and picked up a ride after leaving the sanctuary. Moses Jackson is a bright boy to be sure...but he would need to be a miracle worker to get them that far without a map or a guide."

After Rohm spun the vehicle around, Serena took one final glance at the downtrodden neighborhoods they were leaving in their rear view mirror and then found his eyes. She glared at him. She frowned at him. He only smiled back in return, the new and improved Keaton no longer intimated by her, before he closed his eyes completely and relaxed once again.

She answered a call she relieved on her cell phone on the first ring.

"This is Oracle, what is it?" She listened to this party on the other end for a time and then shut the phone off again.

With his eyelids still closed he asked her: "More trouble, Dragon Lady?"

"Apparently you aren't the only fool who showed weakness in performing your duties tonight."

"Do tell," He said.

Rohm stopped looking at traffic she was pulling out into long enough to peer over at Serena. "What happened?"

"One of those two security personnel that were in charge of watching the sanctuary shot and killed the other. The running theory coming from the others we left behind there after we went in search of those missing is this: He had been engaging in conversations and showing signs of discontentment with Pandora's mission and his role specifically in it over that past few days." She rubbed her forehead, the stress taking its toll. "When he heard the Kevin boy suffering from Keaton's transgression he knew he had enough. He used a silencer, killed his partner and left his body in another part of the building where our people found him a few minutes ago. And then he set the hostages free."

Louis smiled. "Sometimes things go wrong." He licked his thin lips. "And sometimes I've seen them go so terribly right."

But then he had a thought that must have snapped him back to at least a semblance of reality. "Do your people think they can find them?" He asked in sudden concern. "Just like you said, they don't stand much of a chance on foot of reaching the highway and civilization. They _must_ be found. We need to get Moses and the others back safely."

And then just as suddenly...Louis Keaton broke out in a _song._ He began to croon an old Elvis tune of yesteryear and began to howl when the tune moved to the choir verses of the track.

" _Excuse me,"_ Serena snapped at him. "Louis Keaton, are you alright? Are you in need of some medical attention? What in the hell is going on with you?"

"I've never felt better, Dragon Lady." And he had not. He could never remember feeling so _whole_ before. He sat totally erect in the backseat of the car until he was practically nose to nose with Serena. "You do know that she was right about me all along. She's always been the only one of those shrink types who has truly understood me...my nature."

"Who are you talking about?" Serena wanted to know.

"Angel, of course," He said as if it were a manner of public record that everyone on the planet knew except these two dullards riding in the car with him. "Dr. Dupree-Hicks has always understood what my potential was. She's always known that someone had to reach my _true_ self."

Serena pulled a gun from the glove box and placed the barrel of it on his temple. "You will answer my questions right here and now or you will die, Louis. What in the hell are you talking about?"

He tilted his head downwards ever so slightly, to guarantee any shot the Dragon Lady squeezed off would be a lethal one for sure. "This is but a hiccup to you and your Pandora organization achieving its ultimate goals, Serena. Your people are highly trained, highly skilled and ruthless. Those children will be found. It is a simple matter of time and space."

He felt her pull the gun away. She looked momentarily confused. Rohm had had enough this escapade so she slid the car over into the emergency lane and stopped the car. "Oh. My God, Louis," She said unnecessarily. "You've _changed_."

Serena searched his blue eyes and the rest of his face for clues that Rohm's hypothesis had merits. She seemed to find what she looked for at last. "Hugh...Rohm, I think we are now in the company of _Hugh_ Keaton at long last."

He sat all the way back in his seat once again. He put his hands on the back of his head, closed his eyes and exhaled long and deep. "Dr. Dupree-Hicks was so damned right about me." He said. "But I think I should validate both of your points by . . . agreeing. I am most certainly back. Hugh Keaton is back again for the first time."

He actually saw Serena smile.

He sat up abruptly again and said, "Don't pat yourself on the back too hard, Serena. You've been trying to reach this persona for so long, to suit your needs. I just want you to remember that Angel always warned you against playing doctor."

"You are here... _Hugh._ I would name my efforts as being successful." After a long minute of silence between the three of them, Serena's cell phone rang once again.

She said into the receiver, "That is not the entire news that I wanted to hear, but I will accept this at least for a start. Code Red is still in effect until that final child is found."

Serena told Hugh and Rohm what she had learned: Mathew Clifton had decided to try to find his way home alone. He was still unaccounted for, but Moses Jackson and three of the boys had been tracked down with the security guard who tried to aid in their escape. The boys were scared. They were cold and hungry, but otherwise had been found unscathed.

The security guard who had betrayed Pandora was shown the error of his ways with a bullet launched into his brain by Serena's command.

"It makes no true matter whether Mathew is recovered or not." Hugh said exhaling his relief that Moses and the boys had been found. There only two scenarios that can happen to Mathew and they both benefit you and Pandora."

"How so," Serena asked him.

"Regardless to whether he is miraculously discovered or if he dies out there in the wilderness, you will have placed even more pressure on Xavier Prince and the Circle to comply with your demands so that the other boys can be released. You will have achieved an appropriate amount of escalation of hostilities in the short term regardless."

Serena nodded, seeing the same scenario playing out in her own mind as well.

"What about the other boys," Rohm asked. "Why didn't they follow Mathew instead? Why stay together at all...especially with a man that they were unsure that they could trust to lead them home?"

Hugh's smile grew large and disingenuous at best. "There is a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella of company and fellowship." Hugh Keaton said. "Even the scared, the cold and the hungry knew this to be true."
Chapter Fourteen

Thomas, I've never believed in the power of good versus evil. Human beings aren't born to lean towards either force like that. Most of the time we teeter somewhere in between all of our lives; by nature we are all racist, sexist, and selfish. So I judge people by what they do and more importantly by what they _mean_ to do. Who we truly are shadows our footsteps every day of our lives. So when adversity does strike, I believe our naked soul is bared for the whole world to see. Son, what I'm trying to say is that my intuitions are telling me is that your mother is soon to leave me to my illnesses. Yet, I have already forgiven her before she ever walks out of that door. And someday, long after I'm dead, you must do the same.

-Saul Pepper's tape recording left behind for his son, Thomas, in January of 1998
Thomas

**CNN Building, 22** nd **Day**

A shapely production intern with South Pacific Islander features led Thomas Pepper by the elbow into Studio A of the superstation. She politely asked him to wait in a corner of an entanglement of cameras and cords and promised to return for him in five minutes.

He nodded at her and watched the woman disappear back into the door from which they'd come. Her bosses had already done they're round of thanks and appreciations again for him choosing their network for his important announcement.

Studio B was well lit though a wee bit too warm for his liking. Thomas' tie fit too snugly around his neck, enough to feel as if it were beginning to choke off his breathing. He was sweating gallons underneath his armpits and he had maintained a dull headache since before dark.

He stole a deep breath—the studio unleashing the stench of polished wood, mop and glow and a fresh paint job on the nearby wall. It was a big and potentially prosperous night for this station as well. One of the executives smiled as he walked through the door and squeezed his right hand. Tonight's director, a man that Thomas had worked with in the distant past when he was still at the _Times,_ welcomed him back. Thomas asked for a bottled water—anything to wet his ever drying mouth. The director was more than happy to fetch it himself.

He'd spoken underneath lights and in front of camera's like this and in studio's just like this one a hundred times before—why was this do damned different? _Because, you idiot, tonight you join a rare list of men and women who potentially hold the fate of tens of thousands of your fellow countrymen in your hands...or_ mouth _rather._

His pants were squeezing him around his waist if he needed a reminder. Every eye in this studio and many throughout the country and the entire world would be watching him and listening to what he had learned. He was the savior or the Judas depending on one's personal view.

The intern had returned. Everyone else on the set was taking their collective places. She flashed him all five fingers of her right hand reminding him that there were only five minutes before they went live. So that meant that he had less time than that to do what exactly...to change his mind...to run away from his word to Mayor Ernestine Johnson. Would he ultimately save more lives by walking right back out the door from which he came—or telling all that he'd learned, especially in the past 24 hours or so.

And was it more important to him save his reputation...or maybe save his own life?

"Mr. Pepper," The intern's face had lost its pleasantness. She was old enough to understand what was at stake too. "They are ready for you."

"Okay," He felt his fat head nodding. "I'm ready."

She grabbed him by the elbow again—and to his surprise—wrapped her arm in his. _You are too young and far too_ single _for my taste, young lady, but I thank you all the same for being the instant friend that I so badly needed at this moment._ She walked him over to a specified area where he would be standing in front of a blue screen. The producers had promised that the digitally enhanced image that the viewers would be something both neutral in color and in definition. _You are but the messenger,_ he reminded himself. _Others have dictated the message._

He'd worn one of his favorite tan suits in anticipation of the blue screen turning out to be a panoramic view of the city's skyline after dark.

"It's a brave thing that you are doing," The intern whispered to him just out of sight of the others. "Still, I don't envy you this task."

He nodded his thanks to her.

She left him there and another woman showed up seemingly out of nowhere...or had he been unconsciously checking out. She finalized his makeup and propped him in anticipation for his moment.

She told him that if his suit caught on fire that she wouldn't piss on him to put it out.

The lights blinked from red to yellow to green...and finally settled on a solid green when she had left him behind.

Thomas Pepper waited.

He thought about his father's last sickly days on this earth like he thought about him most days. He remembered how the Alzheimer's had eaten his brain cells and the cancer's had settled for the rest of his body. Thomas recalled the taped recording words of Saul Pepper—his father for him before the damning effects of the Dementia set in for good. The recording told him that he'd forgiven Thomas mother for leaving him and his children to fend for themselves when his illnesses had taken a turn for the worse. Saul figured that one long traumatic bout with his older sister's terminal condition had been enough for his mom. She wasn't going to suffer through another. _Screw the rest of you,_ Thomas had always envisioned her saying when she finally left without even the decency of a phone call or a goodbye. How they dealt with this latest family crisis was a business for each person to tackle on their own.

And it wasn't until right here...right _now_ that he realized that he'd never forgiven her or forgotten her decision. _I never have forgiven_ any _of them. That is why I openly look for married women to sleep with. I don't openly hate these women or want to destroy what they have..._ but he did hate the ideology behind the institution of marriage itself.

_And now what will you do with this knowledge you've gained, Thomas,_ whether it was his own or Saul's voice he could not say. _Is it too late for me to turn away from the only behavior I've ever known?_

He saw the intern hold a single finger...a single _trembling_ finger up at him now.

And were those tears in her eyes.

And just as suddenly Thomas had tucked Saul and his mother and the memories of the distant past away to face again another day; He now remembered the most _recent_ past...and the woman who had become center stage in his life today.

Serena Tennyson...aka Helen had his other alias—Arnold meet her at yet another baby's wing of Atlanta's Memorial hospital on the far East side of town this time.

And though Thomas had yet to figure out the _why_ in all of this...he had learned that the Intel she was feeding him was accurate and up to date.

The intern lowered her finger...and her head; it was Showtime or No time for Thomas Pepper. And like the old woman's grandmother there would be no turning back once this gigantic informational ball got rolling downhill.

"Good evening. For all of you who may not know me—my name is Thomas Pepper. You will be shocked as I am to hear myself say that I am not quite sure where to begin this evening actually. First, I am happy to help to give credence to the rumors that have been circulating on various blogs and message boards all across the internet the past few hours: I was given specific permission from the highest powers of Atlanta's Police Department that one of the six missing children as indeed been _found._ Mathew Clifton was taken to one of the many police sub stations on the city's Southside by a man who had claimed to be a dissident of Pandora. He had asked for political immunity. He had been turned over to the FBI and was in route to the national headquarters to be debriefed. This man's name and identity were being kept anonymous for his safety and the well-being of the federal agents who were assigned to escort him there.

"I speak of this in past tense...because he died of some type of poisoning about an hour after he showed at this substation with young Mathew. This is not...I repeat, this was not the same poisoning that was inflicted on Mayor Johnson. I will ask all of the viewers to be patient with me for I fully intend to address her particular issue as I move further in my dialogue with you.

"As for this anonymous Pandora agent, the doctor that treated him said that his death was from strychnine poisoning. At the moment they were unsure when or how he was inflicted with this deadly toxin, but once it was 'turned on' as one doctor called it, this man's life came to a quick and agonizing death."

"As far as Mathew is concerned, he was treated at an undisclosed hospital for dehydration. He is in serious but stable condition. There were no visible signs of...inappropriate scarring in around his genital areas. Mathew did mention many of the probable Pandora suspects by name including Louis Keaton, Danielle Rohm and Serena Tennyson."

"Subsequently, a Good Samaritan wrote down the license plate of a car that had been continually loitering in predominately Black neighborhoods in the hours just before Mathew and this now deceased Pandora agent showed up at the police station. The plate matched a rental car of Lacy Peters who through the aid of surveillance at a Hertz Rental Car is a fake name being used by no other than a dark haired petite woman who always wears black clothing: The same Danielle Rohm that was mentioned by name by Mathew Clifton. She is a ruthless assassin. She is also the woman who I strongly believe murdered my housekeeper when she showed up unexpectedly at my townhouse to clear the premises when Serena made her impromptu visit to me some time ago now."

"Now, let us move along to the more ominous news that I have learned in my research, interviews and my conversations with former Pandora agents, sympathizers...and Serena Tennyson herself. I will share this information with you in the reverse order that most People of Color—and many Americans period, would like to know."

"This Whirlwind, by Serena Tennyson's definition is a purging of this city...and the Black Race by fire. When I questioned her on the _how..._ Miss Tennyson failed to be specific. She did tell me that she would use the city's design and geography against its citizens. She claimed that many would suffer and die in this purging. She said that Atlanta had been burned to ground once and that it could be again. I, like most civilized people in this nation, would side with spirit of Xavier Prince and how his people have visualized their future. We have seen an example of a House in Chains' resolve when they liberated Carver by any means necessary. I would caution the Circle not to underestimate the resources and the long reach of Serena Tennyson and her Pandora associates. We need only to look at the massacre of the former Memphis police personnel and the fiery death of Louis Keaton's uncle, a man named Templeton Healey that Serena's vengeance knows no boundaries or limits."

"In our two conversations she also failed to disclose who this Caretaker was. There were several things that she did say...and more importantly to me through my observations that are a great deal more revealing about this man who was the founder of Pandora. This Caretaker's final wishes that he expressed to Serena is that he wanted this matter resolved with a House in Chains—and all People of Color with as few casualties as possible. Serena Tennyson has the upmost respect for this man which also tells me...which tells something very important about this man's character. Serena told all of us from my townhouse that true hatemonger's—people like James Carter, Michael Stanton and Luna Belle have no place in Pandora's view of the coming world order. If that is truly the case, then the Caretaker could not have been a hatemonger himself. He had to have a caring, if not misguided since of purpose, driving him and his beliefs. In fact, I am so absorbed with my theories on the Caretaker, I almost certain that we would all be shocked by who this man's true identity _was._ I certainly emphasize the word _was_ because I am certain that he is dead. I believe that he died within the last five to ten years. If he were alive, then we would know and see far less of Serena at the forefront of Pandora Operations than we've been subjected to."

"The matter of Mayor Ernestine Johnson's death is a deep and personal level to me. As many of you already know, I was summoned to her suite and witnessed the final hour or so of her life myself. I know that she died a crippling and undignified death. The poison ate at her. Several independent agents from various disease control centers have identified the likely strain of the virus. They have affirmed that it attacked its victim's central nervous system. Our Mayor was the first target of this aggressive toxin. We do not know the nature or the disposition of it nor do we know if it is a legitimate threat to the general public. We _do_ now know that President Adolphus Sweet died in the same manner. I've said that Mayor Johnson was the first target...and she was just that. The president was shot by an individual named Joseph Champion, who was a former agent, operating outside of Pandora's chain of command. Mr. Sweet did _not_ die of his wounds due to being shot. This virus that was lying dormant in his system was somehow...activated...and he died the same agonizing death that Mayor Johnson did. What is more disturbing is this: The Disease for Control Center here in Atlanta was contacted when the Presidents condition quickly eroded. The then Vice President knew the truth. The Director of both the FBI and CIA also knew. And certain high level people within the disease control center had to know as well. What do they have to hide? Why are they hiding it? Are they coconspirators or merely incompetent in their duties?"

"I leave you with to take these facts as I have given you to do with as each person feels necessary. My independent, non-biased investigation into these matters is now closed. I have completed this process as a promise to our esteemed former mayor. I alleviate myself from any liability from whatever A House in Chains or other groups or individuals may do with this information. I will refrain from taking questions from my brethren in the mass media now or in the near future."

"And with my last word I'd like to remind each and every one watching, listening, or scrolling through a transcript of this presentation... there is a deadly government issued virus being used against US Citizens. Whether you are Black, Brown or White this fact should trouble you. Thank you for your time and attentiveness. My name is Thomas Pepper. Where I go I hope the truth is never far behind."

He stepped away from the stage at last and walked past a mass of reporters who were blocking his path.

He welcomed the silence that greeted him as he neared the ready room in an effort to retrieve the rest of his belongings. The intern had tears in her eyes, but greeted him with a smile nonetheless. He noted that another mass of reporters were retaking their place again as they had done before he made his speech.

"Why are they still hanging around? I told them that I would not be speaking to them today. I'm sure you guys have a panel of talking heads to go on the rest of the night with their so called expert opinions and analyst, but those kind of events don't usually draw this type of crowd—"

"Look over there, Mr. Pepper." The intern pointed a long manicured nail to the other side of the floor of the building. "The next speaker is coming—there _she_ is right now. You almost missed her."

Lucy Burgess.

Thomas stormed past the intern and nearly sprints over to where another underling is walking Lucy into the studio where this night had begun for him an hour ago. _I won't play second fiddle to anyone in this town, not even you Tommy Boy._ He remembered Bernard Lott telling him in his office. But he had met with Lucy since then...he'd slept with her since that night... and she had said...

"What are you doing here, Lucy? I thought we agreed the other night that you wouldn't do this."

Lucy gave her overbite a workout when she smiled fully. "I told you that I would _think_ about it, Thomas." She straightened out his tie for him. "I never promised you anything.

Thomas grabbed her arm with some girth. "What do you know about Chris Prince? Is it truly worth the lives you are about the risk to reveal this terrible secret about him?"

"I guess the audience will have to make those decisions on their own, darling." She kept the smile, but loosened herself from his grip. "You've had your opportunity at telling your version of truth—and the repercussions that maybe born of it. It's my turn, darling. All is fair in love and war. We had love the another night...at least our version of it, now it's time for a little healthy competition."

The underling looked unsure of what to do next. "Five minutes, Miss Burgess."

Lucy told the younger woman that she would be ready and asked her to allow Thomas and her a moment alone.

Afterwards Lucy said: "You were wonderful the other night, Thomas. And I mean that—"

"Lucy—"

"Let me finish, Thomas." She said with a serious look on her face that Thomas Pepper had never seen before. "As I was saying...you were wonderful the other night. You were passionate. You were energized. You were the Thomas Pepper that I've always known, but you were also the man that I knew that I would never truly have. The other night is the way that I want to remember _us._ "

Thomas smirked. "So you are ending it?"

"No," She said "We both are. You are done with me, Thomas, and you don't even realize it yet."

"What are you talking about, Lucy?"

"Bill officially served me papers today." Lucy's face took on the sad look that she'd shown him at the mayor's estate when she first stated her martial problems to him. "In six months I will be officially a single woman. And single women have no use in your life."

"Lucy—"

She put a finger on his lips...and rubbed them with some affection. Was that mist in Lucy's brown eyes or was that a trick of this room's lighting. "And I'm done with you, Thomas. I just told you that you were wonderful the other night. You were passionate." The underling held up two fingers so that they would clearly see it. "But you committed the one unforgivable sin that even whorish married women cannot forgive."

He searched his memory banks long and hard but frowned when the appropriate withdrawal of recollection escaped him. "When your moment of pleasure crossed the threshold towards ecstasy—"

"I called you, _Serena._ "

"You called me by that bitch's name."

The intern chimed in: "We are ready for you, Miss Burgess."

"Well, duty calls me, darling. No hard feelings." She held out her hand as her smile highlighting her glorious overbite returned for Thomas one final time.

Thomas tried to hand her back the hotel key she'd given him but she told him to keep it as a symbol of what they'd had if for no other reason she could think of.

She stood on her tippy toes and kissed him with some affection on his left cheek. "Together we will live forever...yet apart." She left him in his silence, but looked over her shoulder at him after only a few steps. "Remember, darling, where Thomas Pepper goes—the truth is never far behind."
Chris

**Christopher Prince private residence, 22** nd **Day**

Special Agent Christopher Prince's business cell phone rang.

" _Damn, Christopher,"_ Angel's voice sounded distant in the receiver. _"You are a hard man to reach. Turn on your TV."_

"I've already saw Pepper's press conference, Doc. The shit about the president is incredible, but otherwise I don't think he really enlightened anyone to anything that the FBI doesn't already know—"

" _I'm not talking about_ that _news conference. You need to be tuned in to what's being said—and who it's being said about right now_."

"What channel?"

" _Any of them...all of them, you should just pick one."_

He apparently had missed whatever Angel was flustered about. A bushy haired brunette was wrapping up her evaluation of Lucy Burgess' information about... _him_ and his personal life. He saw pictures of himself, pictures of Denise and Erica flashing across his 52 inch screen in full HD. They were certainly much older photos, especially of him. He still had hair on his head and face and he was probably ten to 15 pounds lighter around his middle.

The one word that was flashed up on the screen describing his family at that time was: Dysfunction.

He bit his lip. He cursed. The next byline read _: A Key FBI Agent at the center of the 411 investigations was once taken off duty himself for alleged molestation charges against his then minor teenage daughter._ One of the commentators said that while nothing was ever proven, there were already legitimate concerns to whether this man should have taken the lead on these cases anyway. He _is_ the brother Xavier Prince. Agent Christopher Prince's mind might tell him to be loyal to the bureau but where does his heart lead him? It is the old adage...blood versus water.

The bushy head woman spoke up again. She hesitated to dismiss these molestation charges so easily. She told the others to remember what Thomas Pepper said to them all before Lucy Burgess spoke. If the United States government was in a cover up in a president's death, what makes anyone think they wouldn't protect one of their own who was a pedophile? She went on to say that this man, Chris Prince, was a victim of sexual assault himself. And _everyone_ knew how those types of behaviors recycle themselves. A boy goes from being abused to manhood of being an abuser. This pattern had been proven before.

The other commentator wasn't finished however. He asked the panel how stable could Chris actually be? And then they showed Chris in a shouting match with the bystanders who were lined up at the crime scene where he and Angel hypothesized about the black action figure and what it represented. Then they replayed his throw down with Muhammad Clark at the prison down state. The editing left out the portion for viewers to see Clark grabbing him first before Chris retaliated. Finally, someone had sold the _Times_ some still photos of his face burrowed in frustration with one of the doubles of Serena Tennyson when he and Angel had caught up and bumped the car she was driving. One of the commentators warned the audience against allowing children to see the stills they rolled across the scene next. They showed the dummy Serena pinned under the car bleeding to death. The last photo was of him clenching his fit and gritting his teeth.

He looked angry.

He looked like a man on the verge of losing his control.

" _How in the hell did this happen_?" Chris yelled into the receiver and instantly regretted it. "Why would anyone leak this type of information now? I told you that very few people know about what truly happened because of Erica and her lies."

Angel snorted. "It wasn't me, Christopher." She said in a defensive tone. "I swear that it wasn't."

"Yea...I know that, Doc. I'm sorry that I yelled—"Chris' personal cell phone beeped. "Look, someone's ringing me on the other phone. I'll call you right back."

"Make sure you do." She said. "I want to help you get to the bottom of this."

He hung up the business phone and answered his personal one on the third ring but no one was home. _Damn, I probably took too long with Angel._ It rung again, Chris caught it on the first ring, but again Chris was only greeted with silence. He even answered it before it could complete one ringing cycle and yelled _hello_ into the receiver. This time someone was laughing between breaths of saying something humiliating and degrading about him being trimmed up by Keaton all those years ago.

Now his business phone was ringing.

" _Anything you have to say to me,"_ He yelled nearly at the top of his voice. " _I want you to say it in person. Don't hide behind a cell phone."_

"I won't need to." Agent Sheridan said to him almost conversationally. "I already have you on the phone, Agent Prince."

Things were getting worse with each passing minute.

Chris exhaled long and deep. "I'm sorry, boss." Chris tried to keep his top lip from trembling. "I've got a lot going on over here."

"Of course you do." Sheridan's tone softened some. "That's why I called you, however reluctantly, with this ounce of bad news myself." Chris bit back bile knowing what was coming next. "I've come to conclusion that it is time to take you off any case affiliated with 411."

Chris could have guessed that this day would come. He appreciated the fact that Nicholas Sheridan was man enough to tell him personally.

It didn't soften the effects of the blow one Goddamn bit.

" _What_?" Chris asked in an exasperated voice. "What in the hell are you talking about, Sheridan? Don't do this to me, man, not now."

"At times like this I have to look out for the integrity and the best interest of the bureau, Prince, you know that." Sheridan explained to Chris as he spun around and switched the cell from one ear to the next. "No man is bigger than this organization is, especially now. If our positions were reversed I would _expect_ you to do the same."

"This is about that report that just went down on television isn't it?" Chris asked the question that he already knew the answer to. "Sheridan, you people know the truth about all that shit that went down. Internal Affairs cleared me of any wrong doing."

"I know that better than most, Prince, or have you forgotten that I was with Internal Affairs at that time. I led the investigation." Sheridan said and before Chris could reply he added: "I didn't know you at a personal level or particularly _liked_ you then, Mister. But I didn't believe what that kid or your ex-wife were saying about you. I didn't believe it because that's what the _evidence,_ or lack thereof, told me to believe."

"Then why are you—"

"You should know _why_ you are no longer fit to wear that shield, Prince." Sheridan said in a gruff voice. "I will say this one last time and you will stop hearing me and Goddamned _listen_ this time: This is bigger than you or me as far as I am concerned. We have a potential crisis in streets of Atlanta and many other metropolitan areas staring us in the face. Did you listen to Thomas Pepper's speech or did you just hear it? Somewhere well above our pay grade Americans are asking for the resignations, if not the arrest of people in this organization that you and I both know, for covering up what truly was the cause of President Sweet's death."

"I heard it, Sheridan. I _listened_ to what Pepper had to say."

Sheridan continued as if Chris had not spoken at all. "And as much as that tees me off, the fact that the emergence of this information...this _evidence_ soils our reputation further. At this moment no one even knows where Deputy Director Rice is. Two or three people that I trust with my life have told me that they disagree with Thomas Pepper on one point: They believe that the Caretaker is still alive. They believe that Raymond Rice and the founder of Pandora are one and the _fucking_ same. " Sheridan must have stopped long enough to calm himself and breathe again. "For what it's worth, I have temporarily been put in charge of the bureau until I am dead or this crisis has passed. And I have decided that my first action is to save what's left of our name and reputation. Don't make this into a pissing contest, Chris. You know that this has evolved well past all of that. If the people that we still serve with stand any chance of survival in the coming days and weeks, we can't allow the slightest shadow of doubt to be raised over our agency...or any _agent_ investigating our cases."

Chris hesitated one second before he said: "Damn, Nick, can't you see that I want to help."

"You will help. You are helping, Chris." Sheridan cleared his throat. "Special Agent, Christopher Prince of the Atlanta Field Office, you are officially off of the 411 case and any associated matters. Have I made myself clear, Mister?"

"Yes, sir, Agent Sheridan, you have."

Sheridan gave him a few lines of scripted company speak thereafter concerning his right to hearing with union representation at the earliest convenience of both sides for the business of having him reinstated. He was being suspended without pay and would also be subject to having his health insurance being paid by the company for 60 days as well. Finally, he was instructed to turn in his two bureaus issued handguns and shield to the field office—that he used to run.

Chris threw his cell phone across the room and it broke the mirror below a cabinet. He kicked over his sofa and shattered three photos of him in various stages of his career in law enforcement. He broke the glass of several of his paintings and tore several more to shreds—until he reached Hoshi's portrait.

He sat down on his tiled floor with her painting in his hands. _How could I have failed so miserably, Hoshi?_ He asked the woman in the picture. _Was there anything that I could have done differently?_ He had been alone so long...even through his married years with Denise. He'd lost his childhood to a monster named Louis Keaton. He'd lost his teenage years when his father, who he had adored, was taken from him in an automobile accident. And then all the joy that a young man could know was stricken from him when his dearest Hoshi had wrapped her car around that telephone phone after the infamous parent-teacher conference she'd attended.

Tears came to his eyes...and Chris Prince let them come. They weren't tears of frustration for losing his job. They were the latest in a long line of tears that had been shed for losing the precious woman in this portrait. If he had ever needed proof that Hoshi Givens was the only one that he'd ever truly loved up until now then the evidence, as Agent Sheridan had stated it so clearly to him, was rolling down his face while he sat on this floor.

He had finalized both the large and small details of Denise and Erica's funerals without shedding a tear.

He had viewed Denise's body, or what the morticians could piece back together again, and didn't cry once.

He had attended his ex-wife's funeral. He'd listened to the pastor give a powerful sermon about Jesus' death and resurrection...and a final commanding prayer for her at the graveyard...

And Chris Prince never offered up even a snivel.

And yet, the mere thought of Hoshi had driven him to emotion.

And then thirty or so minutes after that, he thought about Roxanne Sanchez.

_What am I ever to do about you, Roxanne?_ She was a beautiful woman who had perhaps an overabundance of fire burning in her. _Just as my dearest Hoshi did;_ sure, she was wild and untamed around the edges. And yet, he knew that there was an attraction between them. He had first felt it when she was in the FBI Training Program years ago. Chris had wisely kept business...and any potentially personal affairs separate.

He was pleasantly surprised when the fire quickly had rekindled itself when he saw her again for the first time in years at Centennial Park.

And then she showed up before the funerals and the heat between them had turned up considerably—

Chris doorbell rang.

He got to his feet and slapped the safety off of his weapon. He hoped he didn't have to empty the bullet chambers of his gun before he turned it in to Alex who ran inventory over there.

Whoever in the hell was on the other side of that door was had better be more than friendly tonight after what he had been through already.

Chris opened the front door to his house with his gun down near his side.

Benjamin Scott:

He was long and in wondrous shape for a man nearing 65 years old. He still bothered to shave every day, still colored his hair and wore a suit most every place he went and liked to date 30 year olds.

"Good evening to you too, Christopher," He said with eyes trained on the barrel of Chris' firearm in his face. The younger man knew that his father's lifelong friend carried at least two guns on his person at all times as well.

"Damn, Scotty," Chris put his gun away, gave his normally quiet neighborhood a once over and followed his guest inside. "What are you doing here?"

Scotty had stopped after he broke the threshold...failing to find an adequate place to rest his weary dogs. He finally gave it up, pushed his hands down into his pockets and grinned at his host. "Oh, I guess I was in the neighborhood." Chris flipped the couch back over and both men sat down on it. "I hope you don't mind me coming by without calling. You never answer that damned cell of yours anyway."

Chris shifted his eyes...what he always did when he tried to lie. "Uh, I was just going out for a bit." I hadn't got any better at it. "I'm in a bit of a hurry."

Scotty gave the room a once over. "I see, Old Man, we are all in such a hurry these days. Oh, I miss the olden times."

"Look, Scotty—"

Scotty's gaze turned serious and focused. "I had the feeling that you could probably use some moral support right now."

"Yea," Chris finally admitted after a moment. "Yea, you're probably right. You should excuse my manners. My father taught me better than this."

"Yes, he did," Scotty's smile was as warm as a summer's day. "And we won't mention anything else about it, Old Man. And I always thought this place could use some redecorating anyhow. It looks that you took my advice quite literary."

Chris leaned back on the couch, settling in. "Since I was little boy, I've never known you to ever do anything at random. You don't live nearby, yet you walked over here this time of the night to speak to me. I think you used that time to think long and hard about what you wanted to say to me. I'm here, Scotty. You have my attention. What do you want?"

"I want what I always want, Old Man?"

"I'm not in the mood to solve one of your puzzles, Scotty, not tonight. Spit it out."

"Alright," He rested his arms on his knees. "I loved your father like the brother that I never had. You know that I chose never to marry. There won't be any little Scotties running around the streets of Atlanta anytime soon. You and your brother Xavier are all the family that I know, all the family that I will _ever_ know." He looked to the ceiling and then found Chris' eyes once again. "The love that I had for your father produced a pact that I hoped I have honored. I gave him my word that if anything ever happened to him that I would watch over the two things that he cherished more than anything in the world."

"I imagined that either one of us have made that an easy promise to keep."

"You imagine correctly, Old Man." If Scotty's smile was a summer day, then his laugh was the thunderstorm on a summer's evening. And then just as suddenly his look went deadly serious. "A storm's coming." He said and on cue the wind howled outside of Chris' front window. "This storm is going to threaten to sweep both you and Xavier in its wake. And look at me...I'm an old man now, I don't know how much longer that I will be able to keep my word to your father."

"It's not your fault." Chris pointed at the panel continuing to offer muted words on his television. "And you are wrong about one thing, my friend, the storm is _already_ here."

Scotty stood up, straightened his jacket out, and pointed at the screen. "You think that I'm talking to you about these tall tales and fables that have been perpetrated against you by a second tier reporter on a modern day which hunt?" He circled the room and came back to he was originally standing. "That was an illusion of truth, Christopher. I am talking about _real_ truth; the type of earthshaking truth that Thomas Pepper claims that follows him around. You are on the cusp of learning a truth so wondrous...and yet, so very tragic, that you will never look at the opposite sides of the same coin the same ever again."

Scotty took two long strides, stepped over some more debris and opened the front door.

"Why won't you tell me?" Chris asked his father's dear friend. "Why didn't you tell me before now?"

Scotty held the door handle but offered no explanation and no other movement for a very long time. He finally opened the door and the stench of burning brush rushed into Chris' living room. "Because I gave my word, Christopher," Scotty offered as if his explanation made all of the sense in the world. "Pepper aided somewhat in answering the three questions that every Person of Color in this country wanted to know...I will tell you that the _one_ question that you've asked yourself your entire life is soon to be answered." He walked outside of the door and looked in Chris direction one final time. "All of your adult life you've dreaded the lies about your past would come back to destroy you when it has been the _truth_ all along that may be the most damning. You will need to be strong."

And Benjamin Scott walked away and took Chris' truth with him.
Roxanne

**Unspecified location, 22** nd **Day**

She slapped Chris across his cheek.

He said: "What are you _doing,_ Roxanne?"

_What am I doing?_ "I'll ask the questions here. Who are you Chris Prince?" She threw a series of blows that he fended off with relative ease. "What kind of man are you? What kind of man?"

She unleashed another volley of rabbit punches, slaps and when those failed to connect she clawed at his face with her fingernails. In the end she could not have said how many punches landed. She could not say if she'd wounded anything more than the man's pride.

Roxanne only knew that she was only faintly aware of the half a dozen or so patrons seated in Walter's Bar and Tavern where she had found Chris about four blocks from his home.

Chris finally caught hold to one of her wrist and pulled her close enough to him for her to smell his breath. Smartly, he guarded his family jewels and pushed aside one girlish trick after the other as if it were child's play.

His mouth was near her ear. "One of the local papers dug up Erica's phony accusations against me. That's all they were, Roxanne... _accusations._ The FBI was aware of them, investigated, cleared me of all wrong doing and dismissed it." He got real close and sneered in her ear. "I think that you should do the same."

Roxanne tried one final sucker punch when he released her, but he blocked it, reversed their positions in an instant and pinned her against the bar's counter. The bar's owner looked half amused half nervous about what he was seeing, but hadn't acted as if he were going to call the law, yet.

"I should have known something shady was going on," Roxanne said, trying to work her arms and torso from Chris 'clutches. _So this is how we spend our first date, Chris. I know that you are somewhere below the border laughing at me, Victor._ She felt her arms...all of her tiring. "When I first saw you in the park and told you that your step daughter had gone missing...you acted the part of a cold fish."

"Well, now you know why. And anyway, Erica had always been trouble. I wasn't surprised that the possibility existed that she'd put herself in a position to get herself killed."

Chris released her with a warning glance that said: _No more, Roxanne._ He turned back to whatever he was drinking and slid the miniature glass down to the bartender for a refill.

Roxanne said: "Are you saying that the young woman that you helped raise deserved to die? Are you telling me that she had earned that bullet lodged in her brain after nearly being strangled?"

"No...of course not, Roxanne," Chris sat down. "But I refuse to be one of those parents who get in front of the TV cameras after my child is killed denying any knowledge of their child's despicable activities. Erica lived a reckless lifestyle. She pissed on and pissed off a lot of the wrong people. It was bound to eventually catch up with her."

"She was young, Chris. People her age make mistakes."

"They do. Erica was vindictive and manipulative...and not without a hell of a lot of effort trying." The bartender slid the brown colored alcoholic drink back towards his customer. It took two swallows for Chris to get it down. And the frown etched on his face, immediately told Roxanne that had little to no experience with alcohol. _Men and their vices,_ She had such high hopes that he was above such trivialities.

"I didn't know that you were a drinker."

"I didn't either," He spun around in his chair to face her. "I promised myself to never touch this stuff. I made it all the way until tonight before I finally broke that promise. My whole life has been about maintaining control. I've watched Xavier teeter on the edge of losing it because of it. But I didn't pester him. I let him find his own way. We both needed to after what happened to the old man. You see, Roxanne, the great and reviled Isaac Prince was taken from his beloved sons by a drunk driver. The man who killed him was three times over the legal limit when his car crashed into my dad's. He had scotch and soda...ginger ale in his system at the detox."

"So that's why you all ways drink the ginger ale. It was your way of honoring you father's memory, yet never forgetting that alcohol had forced someone else to lose their control."

Chris nodded but held his finger up summoning another drink all the same.

He said: "And where in the hell do you come off judging me anyway. I found out about the questionable methods you used to find your way to Carver. You threatened people. You assaulted two others specifically. Councilwoman Vanessa Davis is far from a saint, but the woman deserved better than to be nearly tortured by you in her own home."

In her mind's eye, Roxanne could see how that entire episode played out. But who dared argue her results was either a liar or a fool. She hoped that Chris Prince was neither. "I did what I had to do...no matter the ills that Erica Lovings was involved in while she lived; she deserved to be treated with some respect and dignity after she died. From the moment Denise hired me...I knew that she was dead. I can't tell you how, but I knew. It didn't change the fact that I wanted her found as if she were going to walk through your ex-wife's door with me. So if I took a few liberties to gain information to her possible whereabouts, so be it."

"So because you don't wear a badge and don't have to answer to any authority figures, you feel that you don't have to show...restraint."

"I did what I had to do, Chris."

"You crossed the line, Roxanne."

"You're insane, Chris." She said. "And what's worse is that you are clueless. You're a member of that Mickey Mouse Club called the FBI and you think that know everything about law enforcement and investigation. And don't try to tell me again about how I should handle my business. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't having a _fucking_ clue what I've been though."

The bar grew very quiet after Roxanne had finished her tirade at last. Roxanne felt her temples throbbing and she could feel her pulse racing in her ears.

"I understand a lot more than you might think." Chris said.

Roxanne didn't want to understand. In the deepest depths of her mind she knew that was being said on the TV about Chris wasn't true. Yet, she wanted to be angry. She wanted to be argumentative. She _was_ a little hurt. That's all she ever the emotions she seemed to know...anger and hurt.

"Do you understand that Carver would have gone a lot smoother for me if your brother hadn't decided to wage his own private war campaign in there? It was just a matter of time and the Choir Boys would have been ousted. I had to get the information about Erica before her trail went cold."

"Who doesn't have the clue now? Roxanne. You want to talk about limited windows of opportunity, well Xavier saw an opportunity to liberate those residents and he did so. No one gives a damn about the tenants trying to raise their families in that hell hole."

"But you do care?"

"I do. My status as a FBI Agent causes me to mute a lot of what I say about what goes on in Black communities. But I am sick to death of hearing these same neighborhoods talk about our problems as a people...single mothers, guns, drugs and the lack of employment opportunities among the ever growing list of difficulties. I know Xavier has performed well as the One. But I can't help but think that we've missed some openings to make things better for People of Color. Like I said, I am sick to death of talk." He said and rubbed his forehead. "Everyone is interested in talk because the very nature of it is simple enough. I want to see someone be proactive. Solving problems is a lot more difficult than just talking about solving them. When it came to Carver, my brother and his people _solved_ a problem. I'm interested in resolving problems as well. I'm a licensed protector of this community...or at least I was."

_Was..._ Roxanne wondered what else had happened to Chris since Denise's burial.

"What if what the Peacekeepers accomplished in there was nothing but a temporary solution?"

"Maybe it will turn out to be a fact, though I highly doubt it." Chris downed another shot and his eyes lost much of their focus. "Maybe you are right, Roxanne, maybe the drugs and the drug runners will return. But I believe that when you ignite the light of hope...sometimes that hope burns a lifetime."

"You believe that."

"Yes, I do." Chris said. "How did you find me anyway?"

Roxanne exhaled. "An old friend of your father promised him that he'd watch over the two things that were most precious to him. He said that you and your brother, Xavier, are making that increasingly difficult on him as he gets older." Roxanne showed Chris Benjamin Scott's picture next to his number on her phone. "He asked if I could lend him a hand tonight."

"Scotty did that huh?"

"Yea, he did." Roxanne nodded. They both took in the quiet moment. The others in the bar had gone back to their own conversations and their drinks. The bartender looked even more relaxed and assured that he won't need to call his insurance carriers tonight. He offered her one on the house tab. Roxanne blew the old bartender a kiss but kindly shook her head _no_ to his gracious offer _._

Chris rose to his feet suddenly...and kissed her deeply.

Roxanne returned his kiss in full.

"I know for sure that I killed at least one of the Peacekeepers at Carver." The confession came from her suddenly and without preamble. "Councilwoman Davis, Carver, I did it...I did all of it for _you,_ Chris _."_ Roxanne said in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

Chris rested his forehead against hers. She could feel him nodding and muttering something under his breath. "I have to go," She finally heard say aloud enough for her to hear. "I'm falling in love with you, Roxanne."

Roxanne heard the bar door shut behind him after he left. Roxanne wanted to move but she could not. She wanted to wake herself out of this dream but could not accomplish that either. _This is a nightmare._ The bartender leaned his elbows on his counter and flashed a mouthful of his rotten teeth at her.

He told her congratulations and that he had seen stranger things in his time.

"Then I was right about you all along, Chris." Roxanne mutters almost to herself in the spot that the man of her dreams had just vacated. "You _are_ insane, Chris. If you are truly falling in love with me then I have to ask you this question: How could you love a monster?"
Chapter Fifteen

My father's second mandate tells us how important it is to garner respect from our families. A man who cares and nourishes his children is my lone definition of a man. Remember, when we raise our children we raise our entire race. Deeds are more important than words alone. Hard work, sacrifice, selflessness are all necessary building blocks for rebuilding our status in our homes.

-Xavier Prince
Xavier

**Broad Street NW (Five Points), 24** th **Day**

There had been a flurry of venomous activity heightening already enflamed racial tensions since Thomas Pepper's announcement.

Four female young women of color beat their white classmate to death outside the victim's dorm room in what local authorities called an unprovoked attack. There had been a SUV full of Black teenagers shot at by a middle aged White man over loud music and the _threat_ of violence from the young men parked next to him in front of a convenience store. Two different lethal shooting incidents between White police officers and young Black men were making second page headlines as well.

Three Admirals in the Peacekeepers had informed Xavier Prince that another of Atlanta's missing children had been found safely. Unfortunately, those reports had proven erroneous. A group of the Peacekeepers themselves had been fired upon in a drive by shooting that had left one sworn brother dead and two others in serious condition. Witnesses believed that it was car load of the Choir Boys using the aged tactics to strike back at a House in Chains for all they had lost at Carver. And finally last night, a Pandora sympathizer physically attacked Warren Washington outside a NAACP convention downtown. The Circle member successfully fought off his attacker and eventually killed him with his own butcher knife.

Warren and Quincy Morgan briefed Xavier on how and where they disposed of the man's body. The One had been spending an evening out with Grace Edwards that might have turned into one that was _in_ if not for the late night cell phone call from Percy telling them what happened.

They had been meeting here on Broad Street at Five Points for a bit over an hour when Xavier finally said to others gathered together with him: "How do you respond to insanity?"

To his mild surprise none of his Circle responded immediately. Quincy grinned as he knew the obvious answer but tossed his penny once and again without speaking. Warren shifted his one good eye—the other one covered with an eye patch. The ex-athlete had killed his attacker, but the engagement may have cost his at least partial sight in his left eye. Percy stroked his bald head, but hadn't looked up yet. Grace flipped the page of the notes she was taking.

Finally, Warren sat all the way up and said aloud: "I'm not sure I understand the context of your question, Number One."

"Then you should break the question down to its base...to its lowest common denominator." He said without anger. "It's a simple question, guys. Don't overcomplicate this. We are a Circle. My father asked those who served under him the same question many years ago—in this room." Xavier stood up. "How do you answer insanity?"

Percy stopped rubbing in his head, but still didn't meet any of the other's eyes. "You meet it with _equal_ insanity."

Xavier pointed proudly to where his Number Four was sitting. He thought they, the other members of his Circle knew the answer, but Percy showed the courage to answer him...even if he had been wrong.

"Yes, equal insanity is our only option now," He nodded as he said it. "Yes, I think it is time."

Grace dropped her pen on top of her notes and looked over her eyeglasses at him. "Are you proposing what I think you are, sir?"

"I am."

"Scar," Quincy flipped the penny high into the air and snatched it out with a smile.

"Oh my, God," Percy found the crease he'd rubbed into his head and began caressing it again.

"Scar," Xavier had said again for himself and for Warren in case he'd somehow had missed it. "Grace, I want you to contact your sources within the press and leak it that I have an announcement for 12 A M. I specifically want the fact of an announcement itself and what time it will be to be a guarded secret...at least for now." He rolled up his cuff and checked his watch. "It's 8 P M now. I don't want the media to get wind of this until around 10. I want plenty of speculation...and _buzz_ we can generate to happen in a very short controlled burst."

Warren stared at him with his one good eye. "Are you sure about this?"

Xavier flashed the man his hardest glare. He pulled a toothpick from his stash and stuck it in his mouth. "At midnight, I will announce that our House in Chains will give the authorities 24 hours from that point in time to return the 5 remaining children to their families. A former Circle member solicited Thomas Pepper's services and he had provided us with all of the intelligence and hard evidence we need to justify our response. I'm done sitting around waiting on Pandora. It is time for _us_ to take the offensive against our enemies."

Percy looked as if he had a question lodged in his eyes. "Xavier, what if the children are found before tribulation's hour is unleashed but they...but they are found in less than ideal conditions."

Xavier shifted his weight from one leg to the other. "Give us an example Percy."

Grace spoke up instead. "What if we find that any of them have been beaten...or that they've been sexually abused?"

"Your afforded mentioned conditions are unacceptable to me, Grace," He gave the room a once over. "They are unacceptable to our Circle."

"Here is another scenario," Quincy stopped tossing his coin long enough to pose his question. "We have somehow retrieved the children into our care, but one or more of them die from one aspect or another from their ordeal—"

"That is unacceptable to us as well."

"We _do_ want these children returned alive." Grace kept her tone respectful, but serious. "Our first goal is to bring these children home alive to their families...sir."

He nodded after a moment of muted thought. "Of course I want them back alive," He said if any other thought on the matter was ridiculous. "But I want them to be left unharmed physically. It will already take these boys decade to mentally store away what they have already been through. I'm not unreasonable, Grace...not _yet_ anyway, but we will demand more from the authorities in compensation if the children are returned in anything less than ideal condition."

Grace returned to writing her notes, satisfied with her leader's reasoning. Scar was something that could not be undone once it was started.

Quincy Morgan looked intrigued with the idea of compensation. "What do you have in mind as a payment, Number One?"

"It is more in line of _who_ I have in mind." Xavier replied.

"Alright," Warren said. "I'll take a stab at that one...Hugh Keaton in the flesh, or Danielle Rohm would be an early Christmas present."

Xavier nodded. The Circle was getting at the core of his thought process at last. "Those two would be nice for starters," He put his hands on the table in front of all of them. "I was thinking along the lines of finding out the identity of this Caretaker."

Quincy laughed.

"Did I say something funny?"

"I wish you were, Number One." Quincy tossed his penny up a single time. "You were correct when you mentioned insanity during this entire presentation of yours. Serena will never give you or anyone else that man's identity while she lives. If Scar is what you truly want out there...you are guaranteeing yourself that it will come about asking that question right there."

"So will you carry out my orders, Quincy?" The One had been surprised and a little disappointed that his Number Two hadn't questioned him further in matters of state concerning the incursion of Carver. "A few days ago you questioned my decision to go into armed conflict with the Choir Boys to take Carver back."

It was Quincy's turn to look to all the others. He slowly got to his feet. "I am prepared...and most willing to carry your orders to the letter if you can do one thing, Number One."

"And what is that?"

"I haven't always agreed with you or your methodology that controls your decision making. But I know one thing that is for certain: You are not a liar _,_ Xavier. You have never done so to the members of this Circle. I don't think that you know _how_ to do so. I'm going to ask you to look me in my eyes and tell me that this decision on Scar has _nothing_ do with what has been said about your brother Chris." Quincy put his penny away. "Scar is the nuclear option. Once it is unleashed, most of the responsibility and most of the _burden_ of the operation falls on my shoulders. I can live with that. I can also live with the consequences and the scrutiny that is sure to follow...the _eternal_ scrutiny."

"And so you think that I haven't thought this all the way through?"

"What I think, Number One is this," Quincy cast a large lean silhouette over his leader. "I think that Lucy Burgess untimely revelations about your older brother carry the potential to cloud every decision you are making in the short term."

Xavier swung his head around. "Do the rest of you share Quincy's fears?" Xavier waited semi patiently for answers. When no one spoke he answered his own question by asking: "Do any of you believe that I have the capacity to exercise better judgment about such a _lethal_ matter without me casting emotion out of the equation.

Percy spoke up first. "You've never given us a reason to doubt your motives before, sir," He stood up. "I support this decision with every fiber in my being."

Warren shifted his one good eye back from Quincy to Chris. "Things change, Percy... _people_ change, especially under the strain that our One has been under. Quincy's concerns...are _my_ concerns."

Xavier inhaled deeply. He knew there would be resistance from these two but...what if one of the others failed to support his call to action. "Alright, I tell you again...we are governing a House in Chains in a civil manner the way my father once did. It may even be _more_ so that way now. The Circle of Five was initiated by me so that I could not rule our House as an absolute authority with the four of you impotent to challenge my rulings on any matter. The next leader of this house may choose to rescind the privileges that Circle enjoys and become an absolute ruler like my father was. I believe that a majority rules." He sat on the table and folded his arms. "I have heard from Percy and it verifies to me that we have two votes for unleashing Scar is our conditions aren't made by the Zero Hour we impose on Pandora. We also have two voices against the offer as I've presented it." He spoke to Grace Edwards without looking at her. "Your vote, once again, is the tiebreaker, Grace."

Grace methodically removed her eyeglasses and laid them flat against her notes. When she looked up she'd found four sets of male eyes locked on her as if she were sitting there nude. Xavier felt for the position he had put this woman, for he was beginning to have true feelings for, the terrible burden he was lying at her feet. _And how will these feelings in their infancy stages change if you vote against me, Grace?_ Xavier Prince thought back to what he had asked his brother Chris in that stinky bathroom after Denise Lovings' funeral. He knew that he was going to lose a part of her no matter how she voted. If she mouthed a _no_ the change would be obvious.

And if she had voted with her leader, Grace Edwards would watch her deadly plan roll out for the entire world to witness. Society as a whole would condemn Scar and all of the lives, on both sides, for which it claimed. And what the Circle itself would see when it visualized the future—

Grace voiced her support for unleashing Scar.

Four hours later, Xavier Prince concluded his short speech on the grounds outside the Fox Theatre by saying: "...I can't answer all of the questions to how we exactly got to this point. What has happened over the past hours, the past weeks and through all of the years has brought People of Color and all of our enemies to the brink of conflict. What has been perpetrated against our people is unforgivable. Yet, the Circle has considered every alternative. I can only best give my best answer to the most rotten choice of scenarios. And I know that someone once told me to stand on the side of what is righteous and true. If civic authority fails us, then 24 hours from now we will all learn how righteous our cause really and truly is. We will teach Atlanta. Our nation will learn this lesson. The whole world will be educated."

Xavier Prince looked out over the crowd of well over 10,000 people strong who had attended to hear his words in person. "Brothers and sisters, what do you see when you visualize our people's future?"

The crowd, slightly disjointed in their response, but powerfully all the same said back to him: "We see nights filled with misery and pain."

This reply grew louder...and louder...and louder still.

Xavier began to stomp where he had once stood still.

And 10,000 People of Color stomped with him.
Serena

**Bank of America Plaza, 24** th **Day**

She watched the flames rise in front of her as the night of the vipers rolled on.

Xavier Prince appeared first. He casted a silhouette of pride and insolence that even his burning would not destroy. She could smell the charred flesh of a dead child charred and blackened to the bone. The sound of Rohm's gun firing a round into the back of the head of one of the agents who had betrayed her...betrayed Caretaker's vision caused the embers to _pop_ and _flicker_ in anticipation.

The flames suddenly swooped up, chastising Serena Tennyson like a child who'd gone astray. Xavier was still standing and had cemented his otherwise feeble frame against her will. _Where did I go wrong?_ Caretaker had once told her to be happy that it was the younger Prince Brother she was facing and not Chris. He had said that Xavier would fold as the stakes grew.

Perhaps they both had misjudged him.

Could even her great mentor been wrong—

"Hey there, Serena, I'm sorry to disturb you." Rohm had eased up behind her without the older woman knowing. Tonight, the baby faced assassin was dressed...as she dressed every night before. Tonight her black outfit almost looked oblique on her body. "I thought that you could use the company." She must have seen something in Serena's eyes. "Perhaps I was wrong."

"Rohm," Serena surprised herself by reaching out for the other woman's hand. "Danielle...I'd like you to stay. Your company would be appreciated. Today has been the longest of days."

Rohm squeezed both of Serena's hands with her own.

"I'm here for you, Serena. You can talk to me. You can trust me."

"Trust has never come easy for me. I have my faith...my _flames_...and little else."

"You are our leader. All great leaders share the same similar path of isolation and loneliness. I know that you have to measure every decision you make with so much thought and care. You have some of the same responsibilities that our Savior did."

Serena nodded once. She was no closer to believing in Rohm's god or any other tall tales or superstitions, but some things were better yet unsaid. Since the day that her father voluntarily sacrificed himself and her mother to the flames, Serena had known nothing else but the Dragon's way.

And what she saw... _who_ she'd seen in Memphis had certified all of her faith and personal sacrifices as well. All of the others were fools. _I am the only one blessed with an unshakable sense of purpose and resolve to see these last days to their end._

Rohm was asking her a question for the second time. "I asked you what you saw." The Dragon's flame reflected in the young woman's eyes. Serena shifted her weight. _There is much reflection of the flames in your eyes, Rohm._ Shooter was full of fire no doubt. _There is much reflection...much fire...but little understanding._

Serena still wished that Rohm had been her—

"I see order." Serena said aloud. There would be time for all the reflection she could stand after Xavier and his brood was put out of her misery. "On the horizon, behind all of the uncertainty and ciaos we are sure to face, I see the gift of order as a reward for our work and resilience."

"That sounds like wonderful news, Serena. Yet, you seem sad somehow."

Serena said: "The order that I seek...that the Dragon commands, usually comes at the highest price. I had hoped to avoid having to unleash the full wraith of the Whirlwind. _I'm begging you to surrender, Xavier. Your people will never be seeing life the same after the Dragon's version of Armageddon._ Serena wondered if Rohm could see the _fear_ etched on her face as well. _Your people won't survive the Whirlwind that others have planned for you._

"The hour grows late. The opportunities grow faint and unlikely that we will be able to contain the Dragon's wraith much longer. The Whirlwind _is_ coming, Rohm. And sooner than any of us had anticipated."

"Will we _all_ burn, Serena?"

Serena shook her head. She could not expect a nonbeliever to totally understand the inner workings of something so extraordinary. "The Dragon comes to feast, Danielle. Eventually, we _all_ are given to the flames."

She felt a chill in her shoulder blades in spite of standing here directly in the path of warmth and graciousness. "Tell me, Rohm, did you feel any sorrow or remorse when you killed Thomas Pepper's maid a few weeks ago?"

"I guess that I could best describe my feelings best as an indifference," Rohm told her. "Until I joined this organization...until I met _you,_ killing was nothing more than a job to be executed as efficiently and quickly as I could squeeze the trigger."

"And now," Serena asked. "You looked specifically at me when I ordered you to execute the second man we discovered had a hand in aiding the traitor in the hostage's escape attempt. I saw an expression of hardened resolve on your face as you blew the man's brains out of the back of his head from point blank range."

Rohm's thin eyebrows rose and she smiled. "I consciously hadn't realized I was doing that. Like I've said before, Serena, I've changed my outlook over the past few months. I believe in _you._ There isn't much that I wouldn't do for you."

"And if I ordered you to kill all of the remaining children, tonight, while they slept?"

Rohm didn't hesitate. "I would feel as if I was doing God's work. As long as I believe in you..."

"You believe it to be God's work?"

Rohm smiled again. "Why do you act so surprised, Serena? I believe you to be a modern day Prophet. I believe this with all of my heart and soul." Danielle Rohm grabbed Serena's hands once again and gave them another squeeze. "You've gone far and beyond what any reasonable person would do to maintain the peace between Pandora and... _them._ You were captured. You were nearly...you could have been seriously hurt. And yet, Xavier Prince has pushed his people to the brink of disaster...while spitting on your graciousness. Just look at how he dared to threaten _you_ with a timetable for you to release these children to authorities. Who the hell does he think he is? I'll tell you...he alone is a threat to everything that is good, honorable, and holy in this world."

"And if I ask you to eliminate Xavier as that threat?"

"I would only ask you why you failed to honor me with that task at an earlier date."

Pilot said: "Let's hope that particular course of action won't be necessary at this point." Either woman had heard _him_ enter. _How long have you been standing there? My sense of awareness has been poor to say the least since my return from the bureau's custody._

Pilot...Raymond Rice, Deputy Director of the FBI, looked as if he were carrying suitcases under his eyes. He also looked and—smelled as if he'd aged 20 years over the past three weeks. Serena knew that carrying on this charade as the leader of the FBI had taken a toll on him. One of Thomas Pepper's main source of information for his reports— _her_ had provided him proof that Pilot and Rice were one and the same.

Serena told herself over and again that she did it to test him. Caretaker had picked this man...even over her...to lead Pandora from the shadows in the days before his death.

And yet, Serena knew that Thomas wasn't the only one involved in all of this interested in _truth._ The truth of the matter is that Rice had not told her the real deal behind Adolphus Sweet's assignation attempt. He didn't tell her about the connection between Sweet and Ernestine Johnson.

And he damned sure failed to tell her about what his version of the Whirlwind consisted of.

She was not above the pettiness that could engulf the most reasonable of human beings.

She had betrayed his identity to Thomas Pepper because he had betrayed Caretaker, Pandora and _her_ first.

He was saying: "To murder Prince now would martyr him. We don't need more distractions do we, Serena?"

"I'm prepared to keep all avenues and options open at the moment."

Rohm must have detected the icy tones that this conversation was rapidly falling into. "You two must have hundreds of items to discuss. I should go."

"No, you should _stay_ ," Serena said to Shooter, but never took her eye off of Pilot. "Caretaker wouldn't seal any option no matter how bleak the operation looked over the horizon. He wouldn't panic and neither should we. I recommend that we stay the course that we outlined from the onset."

"Do I need to remind you that your precious Caretaker indeed _panicked?_ When Xavier Prince saw his brother Chris passing the family's house, he stopped him from going back. Caretaker not only had those children killed—he cut their throats himself."

"It was a dastardly act, I agree," Serena said carefully. "But he took all of the responsibility for his failure and depended on no one else to do what had to be done." _Just like my father had._

"And who will take the responsibility for two of your own Pandora agents betraying you, Serena. So far we have one child nearly killed and another missing. That first child tried to commit suicide. And that maniac of yours molested one of those boys before it we gave him permission to." Rice said. "And somehow Pepper got the lowdown on my identity, so I'm out of the game. So don't lecture about any of this, Serena. I want you to remember that any action against Xavier Prince unifies everyone against us."

Rohm chimed in: "We can still prevail."

Serena reached into her purse and pulled a compact disk from out of it. The CD reflected against the fire. "We _will_ prevail."

Rice studied the disk at her fingertips and exhaled audibly. "You made the recording."

"I did, before we even launched the 411 attacks." She replied, careful not to smudge the disk with her fingerprints. "I've always considered this as a fallback position, sir."

Rice asked for the disk and she gave it to him freely. She had dozens of other copies if she needed them. He played it on the player sitting on the desk nearest him as she knew he would. Serena had worked with some of Pandora's most talented electronic people to edit the content to get everyone up to current events and cleaned up the audio as well.

The production opens dramatically and to the point by revealing the true identity of the Caretaker, which everyone in this room knew would take the starch out of the opposition. _And those who are angered are subject to errors in thinking and judgment._

Soon after, it revealed a firestorm of detonating pipe bombs and other various explosives on the city of Atlanta— _her Whirlwind._

Later on it showed in detail, Pandora's involvement in the initial Atlanta Child Murders. A voice over explained how Pandora was heavily influenced by Muhammad Clark's activities in the months before their operation began.

Serena told Rice after he had finished watching that she planned to give the CD to Xavier Prince in exchange for his word that he would surrender himself and the Circle to _them_ and disbanded the current version of a House in Chains.

A heavily edited version of the disk was to show the first round of kidnappings 30 years ago and the ultimate firestorm of the Whirlwind that was still to be released on the general public. Raymond Rice listened to her in vested silence before he handed the CD back to her. "We've proven our point, Serena. More importantly, we've proven that our cause if just and fair. There are millions of lives at stake from sea to shining sea if this escalates anymore. We have reached an impasse. This far and no further, Serena, I mean it."

"Of course," She said, taking the disc and storing it into safe keeping. His actions tonight had proven a dozen of her theories. _He does not know that I am the source of Thomas' information. He is playing the role of a peace lover, but he knows his call for inaction will enable Xavier to act..._ and then Raymond Rice will unleash his version of the Whirlwind on People of Color.

And you will die, Xavier Prince.

You and all of People of Color everywhere will die.

Serena shook her head.

To what...she could not say. "My plan leaves the most important decisions to them. I think that you fail to see that our adversaries have been seduced by a calling that he does not have the will or means to finish."

"On that we agree," Ryan nodded his head. "And you've taken bold steps before."

Serena felt her head shaking again. "They were necessary steps and this time is no different. My plan gives Xavier his victory. Our price includes that he will have to surrender himself and all he finds precious to have it."

"Everything that has come before, even when Keaton snatched Chris Prince and all those other boys the first time is a campfire in comparison to what we are facing now, Serena. There would be no backing down, any retraction."

Serena said: "I think my plan is the correct way to proceed. I won't let you down, sir. I won't let the Caretaker down."

Rice lowered his head. "We've already done that." He moved on to the other matters at hand. "I've been told that you and Rohm took care of the traitors at the sanctuary."

Rohm explained to him quickly and efficiently. She added that they were close to retrieving the Clifton boy when the APD lucked up and found him first. Rice asked them the next obvious _question_ to whether either of them believed that their little paradise had been compromised.

Both agreed that it had not.

"Tell me about Keaton," Rice asked them. "To think that I've known the man for the better part of 30 years and yet I still don't _know_ him; I got your text earlier about this transformation that he's undergone. You said that he is truly _Hugh_ Keaton now. You think that the Louis persona, a far less intrusive personality has been pushed into a recessive state."

"I do," Serena was glad he understood her diagnosis the first time. "Dr. Hicks-Dupree conclusions, when she was with us, turned out to be on the money after all. She repeatedly said that the key to our investment reaching his full potential was to dig past the exoskeleton that Louis was. Louis turned out to be little more than a kindhearted boy who Keaton's uncle gave to his own version of the flames."

"Caretaker briefed me on some of the same suspicions many years ago." Ryan said. "But I would be cautious with him, even though it seems that you have him reined in. If I remember correctly, Angel warned you that a _third_ persona, one that no one, including the doctor herself, could predict how it would behave or react to the stimuli that Keaton has been presented so far."

"I remember her words."

"I only want to know if you are still in control of this Hugh personality."

"I am."

"I'll hold you to that, Serena."

"I'm fully aware of my responsibilities to Pandora...and to you, sir."

"Now that I've been released from my _own_ double life, I will be more engaged in what goes on during our operations moving forward. It starts right now. If and when you release this CD to a House in Chains, I expect hourly briefs from that point on."

"Yes, sir," Serena said.

As the former Deputy Director of the FBI spun to leave the flames behind them all seem more agitated than any time before. _It's like hellfire._ She'd caught the scent of freshly burning flesh as if it were roasting next to her. At first she thought, however foolishly, that it was the draft rushing in from the opening and closing of the hotel room's door.

And then for the briefest of an interlude, Serena wondered if Rohm could see what she saw as well. The gaze on the other woman's face must have been like the one she had when she first discovered the flames for herself shortly after her father sacrificed him and her mother to the Dragon.

" _Oh my, God, Serena,"_ Rohm said. "What has happened? I've never seen your flames react this way before. I don't understand what I'm seeing here. I _want_ to but I can't."

" _Quiet, Rohm,"_

She went to the floor screaming at the top of her voice **.** Tears streamed down her face.

" _Serena, are you alright?"_ Rohm asked her. "Are you hearing my voice? Can you tell me what is going on with you?"

After a moment the older woman said: "The Dragon is calling out to me like never before." She said through her tears. "She is warning me that this is my _final_ chance to avert her scorching Atlanta again. This is my last chance to maintain order." Serena searched deeper...saw... _him. "_ Why didn't I see it before, Rohm? Why didn't I see _him_ before now?"

"Who are you talking about, Serena?" Rohm fell to her tears, wanted to be closer to her leader. "I want to be your right hand, the way you were _his_ right hand...the Caretaker. Point me in the direction where I can be the most use to you."

Serena heard the younger woman, but all of her focus was on the flames...and the figure of a man who existed just behind the hellfire. "I've been so blind, Rohm? The answer to all my queries lies with _him._ I've only needed to pursue him all along.

"Well then, we will find him," Rohm said. "Xavier Prince will be dead within the hour if you wish it. A hundred of his Peacekeepers won't keep me from killing him." Rohm rose to her feet, but Serena grasped her by the wrist and then her elbow and denied her the opportunity to stand totally erect.

"No," Serena said and shook her head continually for emphasis. "Don't you see, Rohm, Xavier Prince is not the key to dousing the flames of the Dragon's Whirlwind. He never was."

"What?" Rohm looked dumbfounded, but that was alright. Serena Tennyson was the Oracle and yet she had not seen it for herself until moments earlier. "I've always thought that you believed that Xavier Prince was the key to staving off Armageddon...if he is not, then who is, Serena?"

Serena felt a smile crease her thin lips through all of her tears.

Perhaps the Dragon wouldn't resurrect her flames on Atlanta after all.

Perhaps the Whirlwind would be avoided...and the end of all things not as terrible as they had all imagined it would be.

Perhaps they could all avoid being given to the flames.

"We must find the _other_ Prince Brother and quickly, Rohm." Serena Tennyson said when she found her voice again at last. "I know now that Christopher Prince is the key to _all_ of our salvations."
Angel

**Georgia Bureau of Investigations, 24** th **Day**

"That son of a bitch must die." Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan said into the musty air that made up the main conference room of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations building in downtown Atlanta.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree heard another agent she'd met just a day earlier, Barry McTavish, slide his chair out from the table, get a cup of coffee and sit himself back into his seat. "Which one are you talking about, sir?" He asked.

"Both," Sheridan said without smiling to the dozen agents occupying the room of agents.

They all had watched both Xavier Prince's press conference from outside the Fox Theatre and examined the DVD production that Serena Tennyson had sent to the field office and the re airing of it on the evening news. The stress of the impending situation had taken its toll on everyone involved. The manhunt to find Atlanta's missing children was one of the largest in the history of the mainland. Angel herself had returned with one of the search parties led by Agent Blue empty handed. No one could ever say that the younger woman wasn't passionate about her work. Yet, Tabitha whispered to her that she had all but admitted defeat when it came to finding the remaining missing boys. Apparently, Serena had them safely tucked away in a little corner of the world where no one would find them—at least not alive.

Mathew Clifton was recovering nicely, however, and was nearing a release from the hospital. But either he truly didn't know or was choosing not to share any intimate details of his abduction. Angel had seen cases like his a thousand times before. _He will come around._ She thought. _He'll be of help to the FBI but unfortunately not in enough time before A House in Chains' Zero Hour passes and all the consequences that arise from that._

_So we have one Prince Brother causing trouble and the other_ in _trouble._

Some of the agents standing here in this very room had complained to her about how Christopher had been treated by their superiors at the bureau. They said that an agent with his record and his years of service had deserved more benefit of the doubt. The bureau should have been more loyal to this man, especially considering how many _former_ FBI agents were responsible for this mess they were in the first place.

Blue planted her hands on her hips, ever impatient. "What are your orders now, Agent Sheridan?"

"First, I want you to give every note, every lead you, the doctor and Agent Prince collected in your investigation of those crime scenes to Felder."

Angel took a step towards the man who looked as if he had German measles. She was sure that Sheridan would assign her to Felder and anyone else he assigned to the agent's team. _Good enough,_ she thought, although he wasn't much of a conversationalist, he had proven to be more than competent in his duties. He had two degrees in the social sciences and it would help her that she wouldn't have to dumb her analyst when she articulated her opinions.

Felder asked: "And what else, sir?"

"And study the data they've accumulated and string together something— _anything_ feasible so we can try to figure Keaton's next move. I want to know what that monster's thinking before _he_ does. Get your team together. Thanks to our friends in the Circle, we have less than 24 hours left."

"Yes, sir,"

Sheridan then turned his attention to Agent Blue. "In speaking of a House in Chains, I'm placing you in charge of a task force responsible for finding the leaders of a House in Chains—the Circle." He said.

"Sir," Blue nodded but a question was forming on her face. "Even if we find them it won't be easy to acquire warrants for their arrest, it is a Sunday."

"Normally that would be an issue," Sheridan agreed with her. "But with me standing in as the acting deputy director, I've been on the phone with several judges already who have are prepared to help us anyway they can; even on a Sunday."

"Alright," Blue said. "Get warrants. Get something on the Circle. Bring them in. Check, check and check. I'm on it."

Sheridan then said: "Agent Dooley?"

"Serena Tennyson?"

"Serena Tennyson."

"I'll find her, sir."

The other agents in the room all seemed to be scrambling to gather their belongings ready to disembark in a half a dozen directions. Angel called out to Felder asking him to hold up a minute, she needed to fetch her personal belongings out of one of the briefing rooms.

"Agent Felder," Sheridan said. "You have your orders. We are on a tight time schedule. You are free to leave."

Angel made her way to in front of Sheridan was standing. "I don't understand. I thought my experience and expertise would serve you best by continuing to assist Felder in his investigation."

And as long as Angel lived, her redemption was possibly still at hand.

She was alive.

Sheridan took a deep breath. "Your services are no longer required, Doctor."

Angel felt a stab of pain in her chest.

" _What?"_ She asked him. "Tell me you're not taking me off of this case, Goddamn you, Sheridan. I won't be dismissed by you when I can still make a difference."

"I am doing just _that,_ Doctor." Sheridan stood at full height over her. "I'll remind you of what I told you when we first met back at that café in Macon. I was given an order to solicit your services. The man who issued that order has been ousted as the deputy director of this organization because he is a member of Pandora. Your presence in this investigation has always been a potential liability to me. Now with the truths that has already has been revealed to the world about Agent Prince and Serena Tennyson, two people you have had friendships with—"

"Don't do this to me, Nicholas."

She reminding him that she had been right about Serena's escape plans before Deliverance was initiated. She'd dissected the evidence in piecing together the crime scenes that Keaton or whoever had left behind for them to find. Her theories about Keaton and his transformations into something more were proving accurate.

She deserved the chance to see the rest of this to its end.

"And I won't dare disagree with any of your evaluations. You've been damned good." He said. "My question to you is what you can do for me _now_ that justifies me jeopardizing what little credibility this agency has left."

Angel parted her thick lips to speak, but the words ran and hid at the back of her throat."

"Sheridan said instead: "Agent Reed?"

"Yes, sir," The last remaining agent who had dandruff flakes on the shoulders of his dress shirt stood up.

"You are personally in charge of watching over the doctor until I give you new orders that she can exit this building. I can't spare anyone else. She is to be treated with courtesy and respect, but at no time may she be allowed to leave this room without supervision."

Angel folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. "And if _she_ does try to escape? What happens _then,_ Agent Sheridan?"

"Agent Reed, I want you to choose a non-lethal target on her body—and _shoot_ her."

"Yes, sir,"

Sheridan seemed to exhale and turned to leave. He opened the door—

"You are making a grave mistake, Sheridan."

"You're right, Doctor." Sheridan said, but he glanced at his Rolex and not at her. "I probably am at that. What I do know for sure is that the world that I've known and loved is 20 some odd hours away from coming to a very bleak, a very tragic end. None of my formal training has prepared me for any of this the way that it has unfolded. I'm now down to doing nothing or doing what my gut instincts tells me. I'm choosing the best decisions that I can manage from the little I have to work with left. Dismissing Christopher Prince was my choice. Leaving you behind is another. Good bye, Doctor."

Thirty minutes later Angel found herself glaring at the pint of whiskey she'd taken out of her purse and placed on the coffee table in front of her.

She had her pistol out as well.

She'd given consideration to shooting Agent Reed, but had put that idea aside—at least for the moment. For now, she settled on dousing the lights and had stripped off her jacket and heels. She hid the pistol out of sight. Whatever Reed was doing, he hadn't interacted with her since Sheridan's exit and that was fine by her. She'd had her damned fill of the FBI and their protocols anyway.

Angel unscrewed the cap on the whiskey and the mere scent of it nearly overtook her. _What do I have to loose now anyhow?_ She hadn't changed her ways and drunk during all her spare time away while here in Atlanta and served her duties well. She wasn't the one who let Christopher down. _And where are you anyway?_ What had he gone through and more importantly—what solutions did he come up with since they'd spoken minutes after Lucy Burgess' announcement on live TV.

She threw the whiskey bottle at the window with her bottle taking the brunt of the contact and losing that battle. Agent reed stuck his head in the doorway and asked if she were okay? Angel told him to fuck off and keep all of his remaining questions to himself.

Why did she speak to that man like that?

Why did she have these streaks of virtual evil?

Why had she'd been so mean and distant to her husband Seth...

Most importantly, why in the hell would she shatter her last bottle of booze like that?

Angel crawled over to where the last of the liquor rested on the broken glass. Who knew how long she'd be locked in here with Reed? She wouldn't be able to leave and get any more liquor anytime soon. What was she thinking? What in the hell had she _done_?

Her eyes searched frantically from broken glass to broken glass looking from enough of it to quench her needs. Sucking it off of the carpet itself would be _disgusting._ It was expeditiously running down the cracked mirror like an animal trying to escape a predator—escape _her._ She stood quickly and started to snatch just a tiny bit with her tongue, but that would be so degrading, but she needed the hit so very badly...

She found a smooth spot on the glass and slid down it without cutting herself in the process. She sat on the floor for a long time and cried unlike she had in years. She remembered her husband again. _You always broke first...you always cried first, Seth, that's why I never had to._

Seth.

Where w _as_ Seth?

For the first time since she left him in their bedroom, she wondered where her husband was and what he was doing.

She reached into her pocket book and called her husband on her cell phone. Seth didn't answer her call...

...he didn't answer her fifth either.

The pistol:

She'd stared down the furious fervor of death before. Others had tried to take her life.

And she had failed in an attempt herself.

It was a death by rights. If only she'd showed _true_ courage and placed a shot in her temple during that attempt. Instead, she'd chosen the cowardly act of swallowing pills that left her only with a stomach ache and Seth to swoon over her for a week after.

She would not make that mistake again.

She grabbed the gun, opened the magazine to make sure each chamber had a bullet in it and stuck the barrel between her teeth.

She felt a little sorry for Agent Reed who'd have to hear the shot and discover her messy remains.

Although she'd tried to contact Seth a few minutes earlier, she was more indifferent about her husband's feelings. The other doctor in this relationship was a good man who deserved far better than the years that she'd given him.

As for Christopher...she'd miss her best friend most of all. He too had deserved better than her friendship. The explanation she'd given him about her suspicions about Keaton and Erica Lovings only scratched the surface of a very complicated...very complex relationship she had with the most wanted man in Atlanta.

Roxanne Sanchez had seen through it somehow—though through what extent Angel didn't know.

_And I will_ never _know._

Angel's cell phone rang.

She ignored it.

A tear ran down her cheek.

The cell phone rang again.

_Delays,_ she thought, _there are always delays when you have business with life and death._

Angel answered it without looking at who was calling her.

"Dr. Hicks-Dupree," A woman's voice. One that was not recognizable to her and barely audible. She sounded as if she had been crying. "Is this the Doctor?"

"It is," She said in her best professional voice. "I apologize to you madam. I'm not taking on any new patients in the near future."

"I don't know what you mean," The other said. "I told you people that my baby would return as he had. Mathew is safe, thank God. He's recovered somewhat from his escape from Pandora...

Angel sat up and put her gun down. The word going around the room a couple of hours ago was That Mathew Clifton had mended from a physical sense, but had been tightlipped ever since he had regained consciousness. Perhaps he was ready to step up and aid authorities in leading the FBI to the other children the way Christopher had done 30 years earlier. Angel's mind raced with all of the possibilities.

"It was a miracle, Mrs. Clifton. And it's one that can help the FBI perform more miracles in turn by paying it forward. There are more lives at stake. Your family may be able to help. Are you calling from home right now? I can send—"

"No, you won't be sending anyone over here." The other woman said in a frightened voice. "I'm taking all of my children and we are leaving the city tonight."

"You're leaving?"

"You heard me. We are Katrina survivors, Doctor." She said and Angel noted her Cajun accent for the first time. "I've learned that standing your ground when the levies are unstable and a killer storm is coming is the wrong thing to do. By this time tomorrow Atlanta is going to be a war zone. God has given me a second and _third_ chance to get my family— _all_ of my family out. I'm going to do just that."

"You are right about a war, Mrs. Clifton. The reappearance of Mathew may have stayed the inevitable off for a while longer. If he has something useful to say publicly, cooler heads may prevail and this confrontation may not happen at all." Angel tried to reason with her. "Listen to me, America needs to see your child alive and well to assure it that this has any chance of working out for the better. The FBI is still searching for the others. You may buy them valuable time—"

"I don't trust the FBI."

_And no person of color probably should._ "Then you should trust me. You called _me_ , Mrs. Clifton? I'll be very blunt here: Deep down, you know that your family running away from all this is a death sentence for all of your friends and family that you leave behind."

Mrs. Clifton said nothing into the other end for a very long time. Angel used the absence of conversation to put on her jacket and shoes...hoping for the very best.

Her mind raced.

She _had_ to convince this woman to stay here in the city somehow.

"What if I came to _you?"_

Angel knew that the idea would probably work better anyhow. It would save her time...save _all_ of them time. "Would that be better for you?"

"No, it won't, Doctor." Mrs. Clifton replied just as bluntly. "You are asking me to risk everything I love on too many assumptions. I don't even know if that Serena woman is going to try and seek retribution against my family. And I've refused a House in Chains involvement because I believe their presence makes our situation worse not better." But before Angel could interrupt her, the other woman added: "I'll give you to dark, Doctor. No longer than that to reach me."

"I'll be there." Angel said and disconnected the line.

She checked the gun's chamber one last time.

She would prove to Nicholas Sheridan that his instructions could indeed be followed to the letter by _her_.

She would find a non-lethal spot on Agent Reed's body and shoot him... _twice_.

As long as Dr. Angel Hicks- Dupree lived—as long as she breathed, she knew that the possibility of her redemption was still at hand.

She was alive.

She opened the door to the where Agent Reed was reading through a magazine.

She was alive and this man was in the way of an appointment she had to keep.
Chapter Sixteen

Chris? Son, this is your Doctor. It is imperative that you return my call at your earliest convenience. There is an urgent matter that I need to discuss with you in person. I don't want you to call my office; I'm requesting that you speak with me specifically in my office.

-Doctor Mack Olsen's seventh message left on Agent Christopher Prince's personal voice mail.
Seth

**In-Route to the FBI Field Office, 24** th **Day**

Atlanta residents were abandoning ship like rats on the sinking _Titanic._

He was riding shotgun in a stolen car next to Roxanne Sanchez when he got his first intimate look out of the window as they drove past parts of the inner city. The eased through one neighborhood slow enough for him to hear one family praying as they held hands in their front yard. The oldest male figure was asking God to help those who conflict to turn away from their hostile ways.

A half a dozen shot gun houses had the grills out. Dr. Seth Dupree surmised that perhaps they were preparing themselves for power outages in the next night or two.

Roxanne Sanchez drove on and looked ambivalent at best, her pistol resting on the seat between them. Seth could only remember the uncertainty in the days before Y2K and the weeks after 911 where people openly took preparations, awaiting disaster to befall them.

Another family was boarding up their windows. Two others were squeezing the last of their belongings into a minivan before hitting the road out of the danger zone.

He could see I-75 up and to his right in the distance lined in both directions with unmoving cars.

The Zero Hour was nearing but the _exodus_ had already begun.

_This is serious,_ Seth's mind told him.

_This is the calamity that your beloved wife helped create._ Another voice said as an answer to his first thought.

Seth had given up calling her and in fact he had finally ditched the phone before Roxanne had returned from her conversation she had with Christopher Prince at some bar on the other side of town. As for the phone, he never really cared for the things, but understood the need and use for them, especially in his profession.

The sweat was building on his brown, despite the cool night and the two of them riding with the front windows half way down. The wildfires were as ambivalent as the Latino woman sitting next to him. They rolled on.

And yet it wasn't every day that a man was riding to where his wife was with the thought of killing her rattling around in his brain. Well, perhaps he wasn't going to do the deed himself, but the curvy assassin dressed in tight black jeans was. Angel _had_ hurt him so many times before. And she had disappointed him countless times more than that, his heart aching with the mere thought of it.

But it was her part of the events going on here—in real time that had caused him to consider such vile methods of dealing with her.

He remembered a specific conversation the two of them had about eight months ago. She had told him in confidence about Pandora's mandates. He remembered because it was one of the few times his wife had really opened up to him about anything really.

Angel had admitted to at least understanding this Caretaker's mandates—his _words_. She understood Serena's vision...even if she had not embraced the methodology she was willing to carry out to achieve all of her goals.

And Angel had told him that it was her professional desire to see Louis Keaton conquer all of his personal demons by any means necessary.

So did you train him to do...to do what he's done? Angel.

And could he train his own mind to accept the fact that she had to be stopped by any means necessary as well?

He.

Could.

Not.

"Let me out."

"Relax, Doctor," Roxanne said without taking her eyes off of the road. "We're almost too where I think she is—"

"Roxanne, I want out right _now_. I can't do this."

"Just sit back," Roxanne said, her voice growing impatient and testy.

Seth snatched the pistol off of the seat, pulled it out of the holder and had the barrel targeted between her dark eyes in seconds. "All I want from you is for you to pull this car over and let me out of it." He said to her. "I swear to you that I will kill you if you don't have us pulled over to the curve in the next ten seconds."

Roxanne toed the gas instead. "She doesn't deserve your loyalty."

"I know. She doesn't deserve my love either, but I still love her all the same."

"Look around you, Seth. All of this ciaos...all of this suffering and fear is directly linked to her. You're wife help create much of this mess that you see before you right now."

"I know that too, Roxanne." Seth focused on his breathing as Roxanne finally slowed the car and pulled over. "In a far more perfect world than the one you and I live in, she deserves to be judged by a jury of her peers...and eventually by a higher power."

"We're living in an imperfect world, Doctor."

"So very true," Seth nodded, but held on to her pistol anyway. "I don't think you are wrong about most of what you feel about Angel. I certainly can't control what you do after I'm out of this car. Still, I won't accept the added responsibility of murdering her without knowing _all_ of the facts, Roxanne. I won't."

After the car came to a full stop Roxanne faced him down. "Well, I guess that means that you will have to kill me, Seth. I _am_ willing to take on that responsibility that you mentioned. Someone has to stop her. I'm _going_ to stop her once and for all."

Seth methodically unbuckled his seatbelt, got out of his seat and closed the door without taking his eyes off of the car's driver. He only had a passing familiarity with guns so he took his time removing the clip from this one using the very techniques that this same woman had taught him earlier in the day.

He sat the hardware back on the seat from which it came empty and tossed the clip into the backseat. He knew that she was probably armed with a smaller gun strapped to her ankle or something like they do in the movies, but he was willing to take the chance that she wouldn't kill him in cold blood, especially now that any threat he posed to her or her plans had been removed.

"This stuff is yours. I won't try and stop you." Seth let out a chuckle. "And my wife is pretty resourceful. I wouldn't count her headstones too quickly if I were you."

Seth began to back away from the vehicle.

Roxanne's face remained stoic. "Have you ever seen what a war looks like, Seth?"

"I'm a surgeon, Roxanne. I've treated many patients who have suffered gunshot wounds and knife induced trauma."

Roxanne sadly shook her head. "You're not answering my question." She looked at the neighborhoods that served as a perimeter around her car. And then she found his eyes again. "In a few hours this neighborhood and neighborhoods just like it across this city will be a hell on earth. I don't think you are prepared to see the ugliness in humanity manifest itself it right in your lap. Most people aren't."

"You're probably right again." He _could_ visualize it all and it frightened him. "I'm a doctor, Roxanne. I can help. Somewhere I could be of assistance to someone in need. We are going to achieve unity as a community as a country. I still believe that."

"Then you are a fool."

"Maybe I am at that."

Seth turned to leave. If Roxanne chose to shoot him or run him over for that matter, so be it.

Instead, he heard her say: "She'll let you down in the end. The ones we love the most always do."

Seth twisted back around to face his wife's potential killer one last time. "She's my wife, Roxanne." He announced to her as if she already didn't know that as a legal fact. "My pack is gone. Everyone who I ever have loved is dead already. Angel's all that I have left."

"What about _you_ , Doctor? What about _your_ life?"

"What do you mean?"

The Gray man thought that he saw a flash of sadness flicker in her dark eyes. In all honesty he didn't know her well enough to tell.

"I mean that you won't survive the night out here. You won't live long past the Zero Hour once the unrest begins."

Seth surprised them both by...grinning.

"I'm tougher than you give me credit for, young lady."

"No you're not. None of us are."

And with her final statement Roxanne Sanchez spun her tires as she drove off. Seth watched her speed though the neighborhood until he could see the angry red of her taillights no more.

Would Roxanne carry out her threats against his wife?

Should he have stopped her?

Was Roxanne right about everything when it came to Angel?

The only answer that he had ready had been to the newest question forming in his thoughts: _I_ am _alone out here. What am I to do now?_

You keep on keeping on, Gray man.

Yet, one block later he watched from behind a shed as three black men drug a white man out of his car at a stop sign and began beating him. They bashed his head with bricks and sticks and kicked at his lower extremities until the man was unable to defend himself further.

He took a single, giant step in their direction—to do what exactly when he arrived he could not say. He'd thrown away his cell phone and had no way of calling the cops to assist the fallen man.

The worse part of the altercation was watching another young black family cheering on the beat down as if they were at some type of sporting event.

It was if the world was a fabric that was ripping at the seams.

Everything that he though was good and wholesome about this country and more importantly its people was coming apart.

The little beacon of light that the rest of the world had both admired and begrudged about the greatest nation on the planet was soon to be doused by its people's citizen's blood on its streets.

_I don't think you are prepared to see the ugliness in humanity manifest itself it right in your lap._ Roxanne had told him just a short while ago. _Most people aren't._

He'd been so naïve.

He'd been so encased in a box: He'd been sheltered from the real world's problems by hiding behind his work, his troubled marriage and the images and memories of his past.

He had dared utter the words _unity_ to Roxanne.

And now he was seeing the much prophesized split in the country's unity happening before his very eyes, even before the Zero Hour dawned on the city.

So Dr. Seth Dupree _didn't_ see the shadows rushing to approach him from behind until it was far too late—

He felt the crack upside the back of his head though.

And all of the light he knew in the world went out.
Thomas

**Undisclosed Location, 24** th **Day**

Where in the hell were these people taking him?

Four Peacekeepers had walked into Vera Café in south Atlanta, announced their presence and immediate intention to Thomas Pepper where he had been seated alone in a booth nearest the window, smacked him upside his head in front of the overflowing lunch crowd, blindfolded him and tossed him unceremoniously into the back of a car.

He'd felt the first tinge of anger bypass all of his fear when he could feel his elbows and knees burning from the bruising of being dragged across the floor of the café. It was still far too soon if he'd erred in contacting a friend of a friend of a _friend_ of Grace Edwards to arrange a private meeting with the Circle. He had a get-together with this person serving as an initial contact at a local pub. She assured him that his message would be relayed through the proper channels. Thomas believed it came to pass because his life had gotten progressively worse ever since.

And now he had been manhandled and kidnapped.

He had grown hot during the transit. Perhaps his captors could tell because they ripped his jacket off of him. He let off a series of curses at that: That jacket had been expensive. Cursing at them had proven to be the latest in a long line of mistakes on his part. A rough pair of fingers worked a gag over his big mouth with duct tape before they pushed him to his feet.

Whatever the destination was...they'd appeared at long last to have reached it.

After three or four dozen steps he heard Grace Edward's voice telling him to calm down. She warned him against making trouble, especially here. He'd had asked for an audience with the Circle and that request had been granted. She instructed one of the Peacekeepers to remove the duct tape from his lips and the rough pair of fingers had returned and ripped the tape from his mouth. He had lost some skin from his lips and mouth from the deal but was otherwise unharmed.

Well, he was safe for at least for the moment.

Everything and everyone grew silent.

Thomas Pepper thought that they might kill him then, but someone pulled the hood off of his head instead. His eyes struggled to refocus themselves even in this compact room with the very low lighting it was offering. He tried to take in his surroundings as quickly as he could: The tallest and brightest skinned man in the room wore an eye patch but was otherwise instantly recognizable to him as Warren Washington, although Thomas never had called himself a sports fan. He knew the slender woman wearing braids as Grace Edwards of course. There were two other men and women who were dressed in Khaki suits, sneakers and donned in skeleton masks. They were members of the Peacekeepers no doubt.

Yet, seated directly in front of him, was a squat man whose eyes bared the stress that only the man who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders would know. Thomas had only seen Xavier Prince on television over the last couple of years. That much time and that much distance had caused him to forget what a small presence the other man ushered. _But your legend grows with every passing minute doesn't it, Xavier?_

The room seemed to only be lit by candles and the smell of incents only verified that conclusion to Thomas.

Xavier Prince sighed deeply. "You shouldn't have come here, Thomas."

Thomas caught the other man's meaning. The larger of the two men didn't have the luxury of time on his side so he got right to it. "You wouldn't have seen me any other way, One, and you wouldn't have admitted me if you weren't the least curious to what I had to say."

"Don't you think that you've said enough already."

"What was that?" Thomas stood at his full height. "What are you talking about?" He waved a thick, accusing finger at the Peacekeepers most likely responsible for bringing him here under heavy duress. "And where is all of this animosity being directed at me coming from anyway?"

"You haven't begun to know animosity from my people yet, Thomas."

Thomas took a step forward and halted his progress as quickly as his bulk allowed him to. Grace grabbed his left arm while two of the Peacekeepers trained their guns at his temple. Warren struck him across the back of his neck for all his troubles, putting him on his knees.

Thomas wanted to believe that the tears misting in his eyes were originating from the physical pain he was feeling. He spat blood on the floor. He gathered himself as quickly, as gracefully as his large frame allowed him, eventually picking himself up off of the floor. If Xavier ordered his Peacekeepers to kill him, he would be damned if he were doing anything but standing on his feet when he took his last breath.

"Have you forgotten that Mayor Johnson, a once valued member of your Circle, recruited me to answer the three questions that every Person of Color in this country wanted to know?" Thomas said to one and all who could hear his voice. "I granted an honorable dying woman her wish to the best of my abilities." He glanced over his left shoulder to where Grace Edwards was standing. "You have the premiere intelligence operative in this hemisphere working for your House, but it was I who provided much of your information you have right now. Your Zero Hour would probably lack credibility without my investigation giving you and your cause the ammunition to impose such a threat on Pandora, the FBI and the general public as a whole."

"Thomas—"Xavier started to say.

"Grant a dying man his final words if you will," Thomas dared to interrupt a king in his own court. "You do plan to kill me don't you? That is the only endgame you have in store for me isn't it, Xavier? So far, all I've earned for my efforts is to be held hostage in my own home, threatened in every way imaginable by two deadly organizations, questioned and accused by the feds and now _this_."

Xavier sat back in his seat. "You have not been without _choice,_ Thomas." Xavier laughed and then said nothing for a long time. "It's not as if anyone held a gun to your head."

Thomas took a cautious step closer. And then another. He stole as many small footsteps as a man who wore his large shoe size could manage without tripping over them. He felt someone shadowing his steps from behind—it was Warren.

"I've been used by _all_ of you." He swung his arm around in an exaggerated half circle for effect. "I've been living in a path of daggers. A House in Chains and Pandora has both used me to gain sympathy for your causes."

"No, you haven't been used, Thomas." Xavier stood and surprised Thomas when he met him half way. "You've provided a valuable service to a nation who truly needed it. You've exposed all of the ugly truths for everyone who isn't still wearing blinders to finally see for themselves. No one in this country can deny that racism still exist here even after the election of a Black President into their White House."

Thomas surmised that Xavier had said his last statement, but meant something entirely different.

"When you speak of truths, Xavier, you sound as if you're talking about something _specific_."

"I am, Thomas." Xavier nodded. "You helped remind everyone that Black people and White people in this country _hate_ one another." He said and then lowered his voice. Thomas could smell the staleness of cigarettes on the man's breath. "Sure, we now live in some of the same neighborhoods, attend the same public schools and churches, serve the same Master, but underneath all of the courtesies, niceties, and good faith rhetoric, a deep seeded mistrust and hatred almost at the cellular level, still remains."

"Okay, Xavier," Thomas matched a House in Chains leader's low tone with one of his own. "So there is great work that remains, there are bridges to be gapped. We should all remember the words of great men like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—"

"I will, Thomas." Xavier replied and squeezed Thomas' sore shoulder with some affection. Whether it had merit or not, Thomas could not say. "I've memorized all of Dr. King's words and Malcom X's, I can recite all of the great words from all of the great men who have passed on to a better life than this one, including my own father."

"And what conclusion have you reached?"

"I've concluded that the 411 has been inevitable since the day Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. I realized that the Rooster was capable of the Rapture from the day Martin Luther King died from his gunshot wound. And I now know that the Zero Hour...Scar and the Whirlwind will descend on us all—"

"You mentioned your father," Thomas said, trying to keep sanity as the order of the day. He didn't want to know what all of those foreign terminologies that were flowing out of the man's mouth. He didn't _want_ to know. "Isaac Prince was indeed one of those great men like you spoke of before. He wouldn't have let this end this way. You have _power_ , Xavier. I want you to put the past _and_ a possible future aside for a moment and remember that you have influence of events happening right now. Don't give up, Xavier, don't you _ever_ give up on your father's dream of peace and tolerance between our two peoples."

Xavier stepped towards Thomas—and straightened out his tie and brushed the dirt off of the shoulders of his torn shirt. "You should keep to the truth, Thomas; it is what you do well. You should leave Fantasy and Science Fiction to lesser writers. You've provided my House with the _truth_. We won't forget that. Now go, Thomas, leave this place. You don't belong here."

Xavier showed him his back but the truth teller wasn't finished with his business yet. It took Warren and two other Peacekeepers to restrain him from running up on Xavier from behind."

" _You never asked me why I asked to meet with the Circle."_ Thomas managed to say before the larger of the two Peacekeepers began working him over.

He saw Xavier glance at Grace, who looked as uncomfortable as she could look at that moment. He held up a hand and the latest round of beatings stopped. The petite man pimped more than walked back to the spot where Thomas had fell to his knees.

Xavier stuck a toothpick in his mouth.

"Alright, Thomas, enlighten me. Why did you risk your life in asking to see us here?"

Thomas tone neared a whisper as he told Xavier that he needed to reach into his pants pocket for something—that was _not_ a weapon.

Xavier Prince seemed to mull it over a moment and eventually nodded his head in approval. Warren's one visible green eye shifted from one end to another. Even Grace had stepped closer, almost standing in between her leader and Thomas in case the truth teller had indeed been proven a liar after all.

Thomas Pepper pulled out a key card and presented it to Xavier.

"A hotel key card," Xavier asked, truly curious at the other man's intentions. "What is this supposed to unlock, Thomas?"

"Whatever chamber that houses your heart's greatest desires, Xavier." Thomas said quickly before he changed his mind about his own Whirlwind he was about to unleash. "I've given you a personal focal point for you to unleash much of your aggressive energy towards. You have something to pour 400 years of hatred and _vengeance_ upon at last."

Xavier frowned and then he raised his eyebrows which Thomas found difficult to see either motion in this reduced lighting. " _Who_ will I find on the other side of this door you've given me the key to, Thomas?" And when Thomas only answered with a smile the other had grown impatient and raised his voice as a result. " _Tell me Goddamn you, Thomas."_

"Lucy Burgess."

"What?" It was Grace Edwards who had spoken into the silence first.

Xavier only stepped closer until he and Thomas were nearly one. "Why would you do this?"

"Lucy is staying at this hotel downtown. She is alone. She is vulnerable. She is an extremely easy _target_." Thomas nodded towards where Grace was standing but had eyes only for her leader. "I'm sure Grace would have located her sooner or later. I'm guaranteeing you that it is sooner."

"Why would you do this?" Xavier asked him again in a quiet voice.

The two men stared at each other for how long a time Thomas could not say. No one else said a word. No one moved. Thomas could feel his heart fluttering in his chest. He was unsure of what would come next. He didn't break his gaze with Xavier. To do so at this moment would show weakness. Men were little more than wild animals when you got down to their core. _And the strong always kill the weak in the wild._ It was not a manner of cruelty; it was the way of things—this way of the wild.

Xavier broke his gaze first. He turned the key, pinched between his index finger and his thumb over and over again.

Sometimes even the predator doesn't know _he_ is being preyed upon.

"You _want_ something," Xavier said. "You've given me this woman because you want something in exchange for her life that you've placed in my hands."

Thomas didn't hesitate.

"I'm asking you to extend your Zero Hour deadline 12 more hours."

Warren shifted his one visible green eye and shook his head. "That is out of the question."

Thomas never took both his good eyes off of the Circle's leader. "Have you been outside lately? You've already proven your point, Xavier. The public is frightened to death. What's 12 more hours to you...half a day longer until the end of the world as we've known it? We'll all see the American version of Armageddon live and up close soon enough."

"Don't listen to him, Number One." Warren said. "You know he's in bed with Pandora—with Serena herself, he's trying to buy them time to counteract us."

Xavier told the younger man to shut his mouth.

"All of this is supposed to be about getting those kidnapped children back to their families isn't it? I'm asking you to give the authorities one last chance to find those boys. I have a reliable source that has mentioned to me that the FBI has dispatched a team specifically tasked with bringing in Serena Tennyson before your original time frame runs out as well."

Grace said, "I'm sure those same efforts are being used to round up members of the Circle too."

"I'm sure they are, Miss Edwards." Thomas admitted as much. "But the point is this: I don't know what you and your people are prepared to unleash on the public in response to those children not being found, but I'm sure there is no way for you to pull back from the operation once it begins. Mr. Washington is correct in his assumption that I do know Serena Tennyson at a more personal level somewhat. She is terrified of this Whirlwind that she has planned for you. If she is afraid then _you_ should be afraid, Xavier." He said. "We spoke about great men. I have no doubt that someone will utter the name Xavier Prince someday in a conversation just like the one we were having. I implore you...I _beg_ you to give sanity more time."

"Alright," Xavier nodded his head once.

Thomas neared tears. "Thank you."

Thomas looked to Grace to escort him out of—out of wherever they were. She locked her small arm in his and began walking him forward. Xavier dug a cigarette out of his pack. Warren and the Peacekeepers stood in shocked silence until the Circle member moved to put the hood back over Thomas' head.

Thomas saw Xavier's mouth part to speak before the bag pushed him back into a state of darkness.

"Ernestine once told me privately that she considered you an immoral man, Thomas Pepper. But I remember that she said that men like you were amongst the most trustworthy because they knew exactly who they were. They knew what they wanted." Xavier said. "She was right about you, Thomas. And because of that I have a greater respect for you right at this moment than I ever did before now. You honored my friend's memory."

"Respect?"

"You gave up the life of this reporter _before_ you asked me for the extension. You couldn't know if I would have accepted your terms or not. I don't think any reasonable man would have. I respect your boldness, your courageousness and your audacity. Only an immoral man could have even attempted to pull off what you have pulled off."

A half an hour later Thomas had been returned to the street where the café from which this entire episode had originated. For the most part it looked like a normal Sunday night crowd of people drinking, eating and shopping before setting off to a another work week.

Thomas looked as far as his eye could see. He saw Grace Edwards doing the same. Eventually their eyes met. _Could we possibly be thinking the same thing, Grace?_

Thomas believed that many people in this crowd must think that if any rioting or social unrest comes to Atlanta that it would likely be centered in predominately Black neighborhoods as it did during the Rodney King and President Adolphus Sweet riots of years past.

Grace handed him what was left of his torn jacket. She told him to bill her personally for a new one.

Thomas said what he thought needed to be said: "I hope for your sake that Xavier doesn't trust Warren or any former members of the New Black Panther Party."

" _We_ don't." Grace said. Thomas wondered—and not for the first time—was there _any_ scenario or condition that this woman hadn't covered to its most minute detail. "I'm aware of the danger that they represent to my Number One and I've taken the precautionary steps to deal with those threats."

"I'm sure you will." Thomas folded his jacket over his arm and began his preliminary search for where he'd parked his Jaguar. "Excuse me for being blunt, Miss Edwards, but I know your work. And I must admit I'm a bit surprised that you haven't had Warren eliminated already."

Grace smiled. "You aren't the only one who has had to deal with what seemed to be unprovoked physical confrontations in the streets, Mr. Pepper. How do you think he got that patch over his one eye? I'm sure that I count on you keeping that information from being quoted again on your blog."

"Of course," Thomas suddenly felt even less comforted. Just that small detail that Grace had disclosed to him reminded him what lethal company he was keeping at the moment.

"Thanks for arranging the meeting with your Number One. Well, I guess that I should go while I still have the chance. I don't want to be active on anyone's hit list."

"Until you handed Xavier access to your colleague Lucy Burgess," Grace said conversationally. "You were near the top of mine."
Chris

**Atria Busch Assisted Living Center, 24** th **Day**

The administrator of the Atria Busch Assisted Living Center, a Black woman with her pants squeezing her hips and her eyebrows painted on her forehead, greeted Christopher Prince as he entered the building. She told him that Helen had informed her of his impending arrival and started to escort him through a series of doors and hallways towards the back.

Chris had shrugged her niceties off. He instructed her in no certain terms to point to where this woman 'Helen' was. When the administrator failed to answer right away and the look on her face transformed from a considerate one to a confused one to downright conflicted one at Chris' tone and disposition—Chris pulled out his shield. _I'm already in plenty of hot water for not turning in government property in a timely manner so what the hell._ He informed her that he was acting on behalf of the FBI and demanded that she point him in the direction of the woman who had invited him and leave the two of them to their business.

Ten minutes later Chris found Serena Tennyson wearing a guise of this created persona named Helen waiting for him in a back room.

She was wearing a dark wig and darker shades. She began to open her mouth to greet him—when he _backhanded_ her.

He had his weapon drawn but down at his side. He'd walked into this facility prepared to fight a dozen or hundreds of Pandora agents that had been sent to ambush him. _What would my death matter now?_ He still believed that all life was precious, especially his own, but perhaps he'd been destined all along to go out with a bang.

Christopher Prince had searched his whole life for a sign that he would receive absolution for all of his past sins.

He now doubted that this sign would _ever_ come.

So why not check out by on his terms? And if he had enough skills left and if he were terribly lucky, perhaps he'd take some of these Pandora bastards with him into the afterlife and let a higher power sort their irreconcilable differences all out then.

By the time Chris had kicked Serena in her lean side a second time something clicked from just under the surface of his conscious that told him that she indeed had come alone.

He began to tire nonetheless.

The adrenaline that he'd entered this room with had abandoned him. He then had an absurd thought. _At least you won't have to worry about losing weight any longer._ He was surely a dead man when Pandora came for their retributions.

"Agent Prince," Serena found enough energy to roll away from his abuse. She sat up quickly and arched her back against a nearby wall. "Listen to me; I can't stop you from killing me."

"I think that's the first thing that you've ever said that I totally agree with."

A cleaning woman who smelled of cheap perfume and talcum powder rolled her cart around a corner. She stopped the cart's squeaking long enough to take a peek at what was going on.

Chris flashed his invalid shield again. " _You are potentially interfering with a federal investigation, lady. I would mind my business if I were you."_

After the cart squeaked off Chris holstered his gun and approached the sitting Serena once again. He revved his right foot back with the full intention to place kick a tremendous shot to the woman's forehead—when she implored him to stop with the palm of her hand.

" _Agent Prince,"_ Serena cried out. "Allow me the final word before you carry on."

"What could you possibly say that I would want to hear, woman." He lowered his gaze. Serena's fit build had been the only thing that had saved her from true injury already. He could kill her at any moment. He had promised himself that if the opportunity had presented itself that he would do just that. "I would think that you were far too proud or far too arrogant to beg for your life, even after all of those you've willingly destroyed. And again, there is nothing else you could possibly say that I want to hear—so let's get on to the business of getting you to your flames in the afterlife."

"Why don't you try me, Agent Prince?" Serena asked him. "What do either one of us have to lose by you listening to what I have to say."

Chris squatted down, but kept his distance. She was still Serena Tennyson. And no matter how helpless she appeared, he considered her armed and dangerous until after she exhaled her last breath.

"You are the leader—or at the least— _one_ of the leaders of a racist organization that has killed hundreds of innocents and threatened thousands more. You've befriended a man who once kidnapped me and now is likely molesting young Black children like he did to those boys who were captured with me." He caught his breath and willed himself to dial his emotions back a notch before he collapsed from hyperventilating. "You've tried to have my brother killed. Now, I'm sure that you had a lot to do with discrediting me by aiding in releasing lies about me into the street at this precious hour."

Serena's laugh held no humor. "I have been busy haven't I?"

"You know what..." Chris cocked his gun and pointed it at her. A crowd of onlookers must have heard what was going on and had gathered inside the double doors. He heard them muttering, chattering and whispering. Someone specifically spoke his name, but just as importantly, three or four voices mentioned Serena Tennyson's name aloud as well.

Good information for his defense lawyer to use in his murder defense months down the road if it did indeed come to that.

Serena Tennyson was far too dangerous to allow her to keep living.

Christopher Prince had decided to kill her tonight.

"You are the one empowered here, Chris." Serena said in her indoor voice. "My life is truly in your hands. But so is _his_ location. If you act foolishly then it will be the most selfish act you've ever committed. You'll be hurting yourself _and_ your brother Xavier. Your brother would want to know the truth as well."

It was Chris' turn to laugh without humor necessary to make it genuine.

"Alright," Raindrops of sweat poured down his bald head. He wiped it with the butt end of his gun. "Alright, we'll do it your way, Serena. We will hear one more line of your precious bullshit before I send you off to Hell."

"I know where your father is."

The world went silence.

The world went still.

"Good God, woman," Chris managed to say at last. "Do you have any common thread of decency at all? Is there no limit or shame to what you will say or do?"

Serena eased her way to her feet. She straightened out her blouse and slacks. Chris heard her crack her long neck. "I can take you to him, right now if you wish. He's nearby."

"Is there any thread of decency pumping through your veins at all?" Yet, Chris found himself waving his gun at her to lead to wherever she was trying to take him. He would have killed her at the mere suggestion of this impossibility but Scotty's words were ringing in his head as if he were at the Vatican on an Easter Sunday _: I am talking about real truth; the type of earthshaking truth that Thomas Pepper claims that follows him around. You are on the cusp of learning a truth so wondrous...and yet, so very tragic, that you will never look at the opposite sides of the same coin the same ever again."_

Leave the dead alone.

He wanted to tell both Serena Tennyson and Benjamin Scott just that.

"I would, Chris," He must _have_ told her after all. "If only he would leave _me_ alone."

"Go to Hell, Serena."

"I have." She said. "A part of me does every time I look into my flames." Serena nodded her head. She gazed at Chris but he could tell that at least a piece of her spirit was well outside these walls.

She reached her hand out to him.

"Join me,"

"Stop this, Serena," Chris warned her and slapped her hand away. "Stop this right now...if you quit this mockery, then I won't kill you, I'll just turn you over to Agent Sheridan of the FBI."

"There is no treachery here on my part, Chris. There is no betrayal awaiting you beyond these walls." She said. "Come with me now. I assure you that you will be safe."

"Why are you torturing me?"

But Chris followed where she led.

She turned and walked towards him in the smallest strides that her long legs allowed her. He had his gun out with the barrel trained on her forehead. She continued her approach. He could have shot her. He _should_ have shot her. He targeted her neck, her chest, her flat stomach as she continued to approach him...

She reached him at long last and pointed the gun down at the floor. She didn't try to take it from him. She did not respond with some type of weapon or offensive of her own.

The onlookers...observed what the two of them were doing on, unsure of what they should do to counter it.

"No more threats, Chris. There is no more need for false bravado or innuendo from either one of us. If you want to see your father, then you should come with me."

And so he did just that.

Chris followed Serena out of the nursing home into an old schoolhouse directly behind it that had closed decades ago. He kept his weapon to his side, decided to leave it there and not train it on her unless she gave him reason to. Anyway, his chance to kill her without passing another conscious thought had passed never to return. Even without his official title he still thought of himself as an agent of The Federal Bureau of Investigations. More importantly, he was the proud son of a mother and father who had taught him that _all_ life was precious. And he still thought himself an honorable man.

And yet he'd given his opposition the opening she'd needed to have _him_ killed at any moment.

The old schoolhouse stank of mold and mildew when they arrived on its grounds.

Worse, it seemed to Chris to be something beyond simple staleness that he couldn't immediately recognize. Serena shielded her face against obstructions as she walked through the darkness as if this dead place was a second home to her. She opened a door to what Chris only could call the main office, stepped over an old broken desk and continued to go wherever Serena led.

Chris felt his emotions riding the rollercoaster from anger to fear to curious and back again. Whatever was going to happen to him, he decided to let the scene play itself out. He cursed himself for allowing himself to lose control of this situation back at the nursing home. And yet, another part of him said any so called control had been lost when he agreed to meet this woman in the first place. _Even when I was kicking her senselessly...she was in control of_ me _, all along._

Serena finally halted her progress at the principal's office and turned around to face him.

"He told me that you loved hot dogs."

"What? What did you say?"

"When he took you to the baseball game...he told me that you loved hot dogs. You loved to eat them and down your food with ginger ale. You had so much to eat and drink that night in fact that you had to rush to the bathroom before you left for home. He counted on that and you did not disappoint."

" _Shut up,"_ Chris screamed at her. "Is this what all of the fuss you've been making? I know you have skilled intelligence people, Serena. I know that they fed you this information. No one ever said your operatives weren't good at their jobs."

Out of nowhere a light _flicked_ on.

The sudden brightness nearly blinded him and he pointed his gun in her general direction in case this was _it—_ and this meeting with his father was to be on the other side of life and death with his ambush and murder all along.

Serena did nothing.

She relaxed her muscles against a far wall.

An old projection movie began playing on the chalk board that was in the office.

Chris recognized himself and his father walking down the concourse towards the restroom on the third deck. _How did they capture this image_?

"You've used CGI technology," Chris dismissed what his eyes were clearly seeing. "Somehow you recreated the setting and used animation of myself and my father to fill in the rest of this imagery."

Serena shook her head. "The Braves were terrible that summer like they were most of the summers during the middle to late 1970's and into the early 80's."

" _I've told you to shut up, Serena_." He started for the door, but the images _felt_ so real that the picture kept bringing him back to see more. "I won't listen to this."

"Then maybe you should only watch, Chris."

And so he did as she asked once again.

Two more projections popped up to the right and to the left of the first picture. These new angles showed his abduction by Louis Keaton just as if he were narrating to story to Angel all over again back at the motel down state a few days ago. Keaton approached him from behind and it was even more frightening to watch the Chris of his childhood being _snatched_ from a third person point of view. He felt a shiver run down his spine as he watched his father actually follow him into the bathroom two minutes after he entered—

And watch the door for intruders as Keaton took him.

"No," Chris said with a small voice. He pointed his gun at Serena once again. It seemed the thing to do. "I'm through playing games with you, Serena. You said you would take me to my father not show me these heavily edited old documentaries fresh from the Pandora archives."

And before she could answer him Chris added: "What is so special about this old place? And what is that _smell?"_

"I know that you don't want to, Chris, but you'll need to trust me for a small while longer. Your father is here. You need to open one more door and you'll be with him again."

And so he followed her into a conference room that was adjoined to the Principal's office. This room proved darker than either one that they'd occupied before. He even asked her why it was so very dark in here. If she had another light to switch right now would be a good time.

And whatever that horrid smell was it nearly overwhelmed him.

She snapped on a light that had no business existing in a building as old and as decaying as this one.

A skeleton was seated at the head on the conference table and stared up at him.

Serena spoke quickly. "I've kept my promise to you. Say hello to your father, Chris."

He fired a round in her direction—intentionally missing her, or so he told himself.

Glass shattered behind her.

Serena Tennyson had ice in her veins for she barely moved at all.

"I should kill you where you stand. You are truly a sick woman. It's no wonder you reached Keaton. This isn't my father's remains. It _can't_ be."

She slowly pulled a folder of documents out of a drawer and pushed them towards Chris. He only glanced at them at first and then gave them a wider birth. There were records of a body that had been dug up and placed in the driver seat of the car to look as if his father had been killed by a drunken driver.

Next he saw a second official document that appeared to be death certificate marked ten years _after_ he and everyone else was led to believe that his father truly died. Dental records had been provided matching the new date deceased date. Isaac Prince's fingerprints were available. The DNA lab reports had been ran and _rerun_ by a formal friend of his who had abandoned the bureau—like so many others—for Serena Tennyson's Pandora.

"I've always thought it was more than noble of you to never to have taken a drink of alcohol in remembrance of the manner that you thought your father was taken from you."

" _Isaac Prince was killed in a car accident_." Chris said in a demanding tone. "You've doctored most of this information somehow and forged the rest. Scotty drove to the home where I was living with Xavier and his mother. He told us everything that happened."

And Serena quoted Scotty's words of that fateful day as if she'd scripted them herself.

" _Why would Scotty lie to me?"_ Chris felt the tears begin to fall; the truth of it all...his _Whirlwind_ setting in. "What is the meaning of all of this deception?"

"Your father sacrificed one of his lives so he could pursue his _other_ without further interruption." Serena said. "I must admit that his choice is not one that I could have emulated. That is why he is one of only two human beings that I can factually say that I not only adored—but loved as well."

"What?"

"Your father, Isaac Prince, is one of the answers that every Person of Color in this country wants to know. Your father was the founder of Pandora. He was the _Caretaker_."

There was a prolonged silence.

And then more silence.

And then more;

At last Chris opened his mouth to speak but he only tasted mothballs.

And so Serena spoke to him and _for_ him.

"He told me many years later that he was surprised at the paths that his beloved children had taken: You chose to go into law enforcement as he had done between seasons as a House in Chains founder. Xavier took a more direct path in his own footsteps—although the incident at Princeton probably nudged him over that preverbal edge into the role of the One."

"I don't want to hear anymore." But Chris scooped up the available documents anyway as he back peddled towards the door from which he came. "I want you to stay away from me. If you come near me again I will kill you."

"Xavier doesn't possess your strength." Serena continued on as if Chris had never spoken at all. "I've done all of _this—_ shown you all of this in hopes that you will share this information with your brother. If he knows the truth about your father's secret life and identity as the Caretaker, I know that he will stand down from the threats he has carelessly made against me, Pandora and his country. You will recover from this as a stronger man. But this information will destroy the very foundation of their House."

"I asked you to stay away from me."

"I need you to do this for me, Chris." She moved towards him. He couldn't find that damned door handle. "The Whirlwind can only be avoided if Xavier stands down _now_. And I believe that this Whirlwind will be far worse than even what I've seen in my flames. There are other factors involved that are even out of my influence. Grace Edwards listens to Xavier. The Circle listens to her. Make your brother listen to _you."_

Chris halted his retreat long enough to say: "So you're using me to get to him."

"I'm empowering you so that you can finish what your father started. He wanted to keep the peace. He wanted the two prominent races to remain tolerant of each other. He wanted your people to take pride in themselves and their communities. He wanted to avoid the slaughter of innocent young Black men and women by a superior force. He sacrificed _you_ in an attempt to stop it 30 years ago."

" _No,"_ Chris said. "I don't think so. I can't help you. I need more answers than the ones you are providing." He gave the room a once over. "And I'm not entirely convinced that I believe any of this."

"I understand," Serena said as a concession. "You should go see Benjamin Scott. He knows the truth that I've been telling you about your father. Go. There isn't a lot of time left."

Chris turned to leave, found the door handle at last, and heard her call his name one last time.

"You should hurry, Christopher Prince. Everything rest in your hands now."

A half hour later Chris found himself parked outside Scotty's apartment in East Atlanta.

" _Scotty,"_ Chris yelled for him half way up the walkway. " _Scotty, where are you hiding you bastard?"_

Scotty pulled up one of his bedroom windows with all of the composure and calmness that Chris would never have even under the best of circumstances.

"Come inside, Christopher." He said. "I'll put on some tea. Come inside. We'll talk. We _need_ to talk."

"You lied to me. You lied to Xavier." Chris waved the folder full of documents up high where his father's dearest friend could see them. "You've kept this hidden from us for years."

Scotty folded his hands in front of him and searched the sky for answers that higher powers weren't going to provide for him tonight. Instead, he waved Chris up and the testy younger man finally agreed."

Sitting on Scotty's sofa a few minutes later, Chris glared at the steam rising off of his own cup of tea.

Scotty sat next to him. "Serena must be pretty desperate to risk disclosing this damning information to you now. Xavier's Zero Hour threat really hit home."

"So you are telling me that all of this bullshit that I'm holding in my hands is true." Chris said. "These death certificates I have with me; this dental work in this file. She told me that my father was the Caretaker."

Scotty nodded to everything he was saying. "I know that none of this will be easy for you to understand, Old Man."

"I thought that my father loved us."

"He did."

"I thought that _you_ loved me and my brother as well, Scotty."

"I do." Scotty replied and moved closer to Chris. "But I loved your father even more. He and David Hicks were the brothers that I would never have. Isaac wouldn't have gone through with this full transformation after Keaton's failure with you and the other boys if I hadn't given my word to watch over you and your brother after he was...gone."

"You told us he was dead, Scotty."

"No, I told you that he had _left_ us. I'm not trying to mince words with you, Old Man. But I did not lie to you."

"Did my step mother know?"

Scotty shook his head. "I disagreed with the harsh, unfathomable steps he was taking. I hated it. We argued. Our arguments eventually came to fisticuffs. We argued some more. Those conversations only hardened his resolve. It only made him more determined to see his long term plans through."

"What plan?"

"Your father wanted to avoid the eventual conflict that we now find ourselves mere hours away from. He felt that his sphere of influence was limited as the leader of a House in Chains. He felt by working behind the scenes in his new role with Pandora that he could influence policy from the opposite side of virtually the same coin."

"So he orchestrated the first round of the Atlanta Child murders."

"He did."

"He sacrificed me, Scotty." Chris said. "He freely and willingly gave one of his own sons to a madman and a pedophile."

Scotty hesitated, measured his response, said: "He did just that, Old Man. He profiled Keaton for years before approaching him. He'd first arrested him on some petty exposure charge five years before. He knew that Keaton wouldn't touch you. I can't tell you how. I won't try to convince you otherwise. And yet, he _knew."_

"So my own father, this Caretaker persona, was the brainchild behind these abductions. What about Muhammad Clark?"

"I know that his parallel operation was one that Clark had perpetrated for his own personal, sick gains." Scotty backed off of his belligerent tone though when he said: "Clark had struck at least a half a dozen times when some local and national papers first started publishing stories about the ignition of a race war as the motive for the crimes. Your father jumped on that idea—and made it _so._ You were allowed to be taken soon after." Scotty sipped at his tea. "Keaton made you his general just as his psychological profile suggested that he would. He wanted you to watch over the other children, to keep them safe, protect them from outside forces that could harm them."

"And yet, if Keaton poked them in the meantime it would be okay."

"Your father was trying to save a generation of his own race the best way he knew how, Old Man. He was so confident and assured in what he was doing that put you up as collateral against its failure."

Chris sat his head in his hands. "Oh my God, so when I didn't return to the place where we were being kept when Xavier saw me passing through our neighborhood—"

"Your father...your father killed those children _himself._ But just as he could ask no one else to sacrifice their child to Keaton...he could not bestow the dishonor of those boys' murders on anyone else in Pandora. He alone went back to that residence and cut those boys throats and burned their bodies." Benjamin Scott paused as emotion threatened to best him for the first time during this conversation. "I know it means nothing to you now, Old Man, but Isaac Prince was never the same man after that. A piece of the man I'd known for decades truly did die that day. It set back his entire cause from both sides of that preverbal coin that we spoke of before. I believe that it was in those days afterwards that the plan for his first birth rights and name to die so that he could finish his work of saving lives was born."

"I don't think all of that matters a hell of a lot to me, Scotty." Chris said. "How could my own father do this to me...to his family?"

"I watched your father evolve into many things over the years: He was a cop. He was the Civil Rights leader. He was a bad husband...but not in the manner that you're thinking." Chris could tell that Scotty had _another_ story to tell but it would have to wait for another day. "But if I have to describe one word to describe him even all these years later then I would use one word—selfless."

Chris stood. "Is that supposed to help me forgive him?"

"No, it should not, Old Man." And Scotty stood as well. "Just be reminded during your worst bouts of anger in the days to come that Isaac Prince wasn't going to ask anyone else to sacrifice anything he wasn't willing to sacrifice himself."

"My God," Chris said again. He had the strength to mutter nothing else.

"Years later, a young woman who'd fled the ideologies of the FBI and witnessed great sacrifices in her own young life became his prized student. He made her give her word that she would carry out his wishes when advanced age or death no longer allowed him to." Scotty sipped at his tea again but remained standing. "When you chose law enforcement he was proud of you but..."

"But what, Scotty,"

"He was profoundly disappointed that you didn't follow his footsteps as the absolute leader of a House in Chains. He counted on you and Serena to work this racial epithet out in a more reasonable manner. He loved your brother; never question that, Old Man. Yet, he never thought that Xavier had the drive or the ambition or the discipline to pursue leadership of the group he'd founded. That gap in years of leadership led directly into the organization having to absorb the New Black Panther into the House just for its financial survival at that time. Xavier continued to drink and to whore...so your father began to plan 411 with Serena Tennyson and Raymond Rice."

Chris found himself pacing the hardwood floors of Scotty's apartment. The older man sat down again to better sip his tea and then said: "And now you are allied with the truth, Old Man. What will you do with it?"

"I wish I knew."

Scotty finished his cup at last and stood again. Chris immediately stopped his pacing. They found each other's eyes. Chris wanted to hate this man with all of his heart nearly as badly as he wanted to kill Serena Tennyson earlier tonight but just like hours ago he wondered how he would live with what he'd done.

Benjamin Scott had been more devoted to his father than most married couples were to each other. And he had been a wondrous mentor for himself and his brother Xavier over these years when they had no one else to turn to.

And yet their relationship as he once knew it was gone forever.

A change was coming.

And Chris Prince's life was going to change, yet again, forever.

He heard his personal cell phone ring. He gave the number lit up in its ID placement a once over, expecting to be Angel or Roxanne trying to reach him. He glared at the number a ring longer. He didn't recognize it, but whoever it was had been blowing his number up over the past few days. He couldn't even tie it to Serena Tennyson any longer, since she called him only once from another cell number, trying to arrange her fateful meeting that they had earlier.

He started to disconnect it and thought what the hell?

"Hello."

"Christopher Prince, My God, did I finally reach you."

Chris absorbed the sound of the man's voice on the line for a second...the inflections finally connecting with him after a bit.

But why would his personal physician contact him at 11:30 at night?

"I do apologize for calling you at this hour, but I've I haven't been able to reach you for weeks now. I don't understand why don't you ever answer your phone, son?"

"It's alright, Doc." Chris bit back a curse. He was in no mood to be dressed down by anyone else tonight. "If it's okay, I give you my word that I'll give you a call during _normal_ business hours. I have a lot on my plate—"

"No, I'm sorry son; you most certainly will not be doing that." Gideon said. "I finally have reached you and I refuse to hang up until we have spoken. I wanted to wait, to see you in my office personally—"

"Look, Doc, if this is about my physical that I had the other week, I'm sure we can set up an appointment—"

"You don't understand, Christopher. It is vitally important that I begin consultation with you immediately."

"Consultation," The syllables soured on Chris' tongue as he ushered it. He felt his stomach ache. "What are you talking about? What exactly do you need to counsel me on, Doctor Gideon?"

"I really don't want to do this over the phone. Come in tomorrow and we'll talk son." His private doctor said. "I'll clear out my morning schedule if you like. I wanted to speak to you to get your attention and now I have. But I would prefer not to disclose sensitive patient information over an unsecured line."

" _What is it, Doctor?"_

Gideon cleared his voice, using the extra minute to gather himself. And then he found the trained professional tone he'd probably used for the better part of 30 years.

"Two of your blood test that you took the other day showed some disturbing tearing in the lining of your adnominal wall. I thought that was damned peculiar. So I took the liberty of ordering a more detailed examination so that I could be absolutely certain."

"I don't like what I'm hearing here; so that you could be certain of _what_ , Doctor?"

Scotty put his tea cup down. He couldn't hear the conversation but must have read the lines of dread in Chris' face word for word.

"You've been a patient of mine for years, son. I won't discuss a diagnosis of a patient like this by phone. I _won't_ "

" _Doctor Gideon, talk to me,"_ Chris yelled into his phone. " _I'm begging you to tell me what is wrong?"_

"The walls of your stomach are collapsing at an accelerated rate. It's _cancer_ , Christopher. You're intestines aren't providing a defense. You're being eaten alive from the inside out. You've wrongly thinking that you're gaining weight when in actuality your middle is swelling from the infection."

After Chris calmed himself, he said: "You're telling me that I'm dying from the same cancer that killed my mother?"

Christopher Prince had searched for a sign that he would receive absolution for all of his past sins.

"I am saying just that," Doctor Gideon told him. "I'm sorry. It pains me to add to your misery by telling you that at this accelerated pace the cancer's spreading, that you have less than six months to live, Christopher Prince."

All of his life he had waited for God to send his a sign of his absolution for the sins that he had committed.

He now doubted that this sign would ever come.
Episode 6 Betrayal 
Chapter Seventeen

Okay, so I've been reduced to a cliché on this one. I'll categorize this area of extreme low pressure surging through the plains heading east by southeast can only be categorized as the storm of the century.

-Rudolph Phelps, Chief Meteorologist of the Weather Channel
Seth

**North Avenue (Street Level), 25** th **Day**

The doctor swam up put of slumber the way a salmon struggles up stream against a stiff current.

He had a dull headache racing through his skull, down the nape of his neck and through his shoulders. His vision had blurred and he had trouble focusing his thoughts. He rubbed the back of his head and felt a mountain of a knot raising there that would take weeks to heal. He'd bumped his head in a collision with an oak tree when he was eleven and the way he physically felt was the only thing he had to compare to this fiasco.

He focused.

Concentrated.

He wondered where in the hell he was. This wasn't the same row of houses or streets he remembered before he blackened out. With a sudden chill he thought _where is the person who did this to me?_

Seth watched the Peacekeepers—he thought he'd heard the media refer to them in that vein—dragging a white man out of the passenger side seat of an old Buick by his hair.

A trickle of sweat poured down his own forehead as he continued to watch the proceedings: They drug him up the hill, within 20 or 25 feet from where he was seated. Seth heard a bald dark skinned man—the only Peacekeeper unmasked—supervising the operation.

Seth looked away. He felt a sudden tingling running through his legs. He took it as a good sign that he'd be able to lift himself up and escape. He was the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood on the wrong night. And nothing would change those facts for the better. And probably no amount of explanation that he was a doctor would serve these people. He had just decided to exit to the south when he heard subtle movement behind where he was still sitting.

Seth thought, _don't panic. Well okay, you are_ already _panicked_ , _but don't show it._

"Good evening, Doctor," A deep voice said. "Well, good morning actually. You finally came to. For a moment I thought that I had belted you across your head too hard."

Seth eased into a new position with his knees up, chin down, and his arms wrapped around his legs.

"Very good, Doctor, very good indeed. You are playing it smart. You are taking in your surroundings; letting the moment breathe. You'd be amazed how many people get themselves killed in situations like this one because they talked too much or did something irrational."

Two of the masked men slammed the white man, who'd been dragged from the old Buick, to the asphalt. The victim pleaded his case. The bald headed man and the others halt the assault long enough to turn towards Seth and whoever is behind him, seemingly awaiting instructions.

"You're going to execute him," Seth managed to say in as neutral a tone as he could muster. It was the same voice he'd learn to perfect over the years in his practice. He'd often needed it when he had given a patient the news of a difficult diagnosis or when he had to inform a family that their loved one had died on his operating table. "May I ask what his crime was?"

"The Circle has attained enough circumstantial evidence to convict this man for the being responsible for the disappearances and murders of four men of color on separate occasions in Southwest Georgia and across the border into Alabama."

"Circumstantial evidence?"

The man behind him grinned softly.

"Sorry. I need to back up a bit. Let me give you a little history. This man, John Ritter, was actually convicted in a Georgia courtroom for one of the kidnappings and murders. Yet, and you'll like _this_ part, Doctor," He paused for effect. "Yet, that jury indictment was later tossed aside in an appellant court due to logging errors by the arresting officer. Can you believe that, Doctor?" The man's breathing became very heavy. "The court allowed a killer to walk because of a _logging_ error."

Seth swung around. This man of color was lean and toned. He had almond colored skin, big brown eyes and wore a fresh haircut. Seth couldn't recall ever seeing this man on television. He quickly decided that he wasn't Xavier Prince.

But if Xavier Prince didn't fear this man he very well should have.

"Look, I don't know who you are, sir. But those men over there are Peacekeepers. You mentioned the Circle. That means you are all members of A House in Chains. I'm certainly not foolish enough to instruct you how to carry on your business, but aren't you violating your own mandate. I thought Xavier Prince called for an extension to the Zero Hour to avoid hostilities."

"He did." The man behind him said. "And as you have so politely articulated, I am a member of the Circle. And I've decided on my own authority that recovering Atlanta's missing children won't erase the guilt off of _this_ man."

Seth felt himself swallow.

"Am I on your list as well?"

The member of the Circle shook his head.

"No, of course not, Doctor. You are one of this state's most decorated and successful surgeons. You improve the quality of your patient's lives. You save countless others. You are an asset to this community..." The man's voice trailed off.

"...You are so unlike your wife."

Seth finally stood.

"You have me at a disadvantage, _sir_." The doctor said, and then quickly realized he had adapted Denise's inflections of his last spoken word. He took a deep breath before speaking again. "You know so much about me and my family and yet I don't even know your name."

"My name is Quincy Morgan. I am the sergeant at arms of A House in Chains and the military head of the Peacekeepers."

Seth swallowed any foolery or bravado that he may have dared to mouth next. Angel had made powerful enemies across of wide spectrum. A few impotent words ushered from his thin lips weren't going to change that from fact to fiction like magic.

And yet, as long as they both lived, she was his wife.

He had taken a vow to protect her.

He must still find a way to reach her before...before all the others did.

"If my wife is truly guilty of any wrong doing she should be tried and subsequently convicted in a court of law by a jury of her peers, Quincy."

The other man nodded.

"As well she might. My Peacekeeper's part in this phase of the operation will be very brief."

Seth shook his head once, not understanding.

"What exactly does that mean?"

Morgan checked his watch.

"We don't have the time or the resources to dedicate a full search for your wife, Doctor." He took a step in Seth's direction. "We are sure that Roxanne Sanchez _does_ have both time and resources to complete the task for us—likely before dawn anyway."

Seth slouched in his stance a little.

"So why am I here, Quincy?" You didn't knock me unconscious just to have me awaken so you can gloat about my wife's impending doom." Seth wiped spittle from his lips. "Why am I here? What could you possibly want from me?"

Quincy Morgan approached Seth. The doctor felt his pulse quicken and his pulse racing in his ears.

"Come with us. Witness our historic and glorious work for yourself." Quincy's voice lowered itself to an almost quiet, but lethal tone. "And my people have much glory to take in the hours ahead."

Seth dared square his shoulders and held the other man's gaze. "It sounded as if you asked me along and not instructed me to. Are you saying that I have a say so in this matter?"

Quincy laughed. It was surprisingly absent a sarcasm and animosity.

"Of course you have a say so, Doctor. It's not as if anyone here had put a gun to your head."

"And if I choose to decline your offer?" Seth asked quickly while he wore courage on his shoulder. "What if I choose to be left alone? What if I walk away from here?"

"Then you would have chosen darkness over the light. You would have chosen death over life." Quincy said just as quickly. His mood was dire as if the laughter of the moments just before now never existed. Dr. Seth Dupree watched the other man's big brown eyes fall to slits. "I can guarantee that each member of the Peacekeeper cell you see before you will hunt you down like the hound dogs your people once released on runaway slaves."

Seth felt tears coming. "And then your people will kill me."

"No," Quincy shook his head and the smile had reigned again. "No, Doctor, not at first. We will let you suffer out here for hours and hours on end helpless and alone. You will tire. Your body will wish for food and water. Your mind will urge you to push on and save your loving bride. But then—and only then—when your spirit is crushed, we will find you and end your suffering in as violent way as possible." Quincy patted Seth on the shoulder and walked past him. "But it doesn't have to come to that extreme. Join us. The FBI is incompetent and a jumbled mess. Like I said before, they aren't going to find those children. You can join us instead. You can watch as A House in Chains Vision of the Future unfolds for yourself."

"I'll come with you—"

Seth barely gets the words out of his mouth when Quincy calls out to the bald headed man, Percy, to kill the man who they had drug from the old Buick.

Percy snaps out a pistol from a holster, his expression so calm...so neutral, as if this ungodly business is just another task to be completed on the day's itinerary. The gunshot barely makes a mark on the sound meter but in Seth's mind it is the shot heard around the world.

Seth felt wet. Perhaps he'd pissed in his trousers. He dared not look. Finding the wet mark would only confirm that this nightmare he was suffering through was indeed very real.

He was alone.

He was in a city that housed millions and yet he was so very alone.

_Millions,_ he heard a voice, Roxanne Sanchez's voice call out to him. _There are millions here but all you needed to do was listen to one voice, Seth. You should have never left me, Seth._

You should have never allowed me to leave you.

Within an hour his captors had driven an old beat up Hertz into a parking lot outside a sleazy looking motel. Seth grunted and shook his head at the car—at the metaphor—and told himself what a calculating man this Quincy Morgan must have been.

The wind had picked up and tossed the Gray Man's hair about with the back window down. He rested his head against the lowered glass and pondered his last memories of the world and his life in it would be the stench of the wildfires in his nostrils. He guessed that it was better than smelling blood or that man's brains that Percy has so nonchalantly blown out of the back of his skull.

And yet, no matter, how hopeless his own position seemed, his thoughts never veered far from the plight of Angel. He'd ridden with Roxanne just hours ago. If he'd stayed with her he was sure that they'd found his wife by now.

And either he would have idly stood by while Roxanne killed Angel or he would have killed Roxanne during her attempt on his wife's life.

Either way he wouldn't be _here._

And in the _here,_ Seth watched as a middle aged white woman whose hair looked as if she had just pulled her finger out of the socket parked her car in the sleazy hotel's parking lot and got her key out. A man, who looked as if he'd taken one in the nose for the team once too often, happily drunk, and even happier in anticipation of what would be going down inside got out of the passenger side.

They were swamped by the Peacekeepers almost instantly.

The two of them never had a chance to scream.

The Hertz had stormed towards a nearby alley in no time afterwards as if the driver had the coordinates programmed in a GPS system. Next, Seth heard four of the doors opening and then slamming shut as the two pale riders were thrown unceremoniously to the concrete with the rest of the trash. The wind picked up expeditiously.

Seth wished for his jacket or a nice warm death, whichever came first.

Seth decided for better or worse he'd direct any inquiry he had with Quincy.

He asked, "What did this one do?"

"Nothing," Quincy leaned over in his seat so Seth could hear him clearly. Percy pounded the drunken man across his skill repeatedly with the pistol until he drew blood at last. The woman screamed. Seth felt a cold shiver run down the sides of his neck fearful for her. She had chosen the worst of nights to be caught with this man.

"Why would you bring her along, Quincy?" Seth asked, he could hear the pleading in his own voice. "Please don't tell me you're going to kill and unarmed, defenseless woman in cold blood and call it justice. I won't accept it. I _won't."_

Quincy grabbed Seth by the collar of his shirt and they both stepped out of one of the opened doors of the Hertz.

"What part of _justice_ allowed white men to gang rape the women who were their black slaves?"

"This isn't the same thing and you know it."

"Don't be so sure, Doctor." Quincy inched ever closer to him.

Seth heard the woman tall to her knees, crying. Percy held her by the wrist. The rest of the Peacekeepers blocked any and all avenues of escape for all three captives.

"How about black women being separated from their children the way you and I would take a pup from its mother." Quincy continued on. The longer he spoke, the more fire seemed to spark in his eyes. He grabbed Seth's shoulders in his large hands. "Don't you dare lecture me about justice, Doctor."

"Killing this woman won't change our country's sad history, Quincy. Murdering her and discarding her body in this alley like garbage won't put any of those families from all of those years ago back."

"You're right, of course, Doctor." Quincy made simple eye contact with Percy. The dark skinned man with the clean shaven head ripped open the woman's blouse, produced a knife, cut her bra and exposed her breast to them all.

She cried louder.

Percy said over her noise, "On your knees."

" _No, Please, God, no."_ The woman begged Percy as she scraped the ground as she went to her knees.

"Quincy, don't order Percy to do this." Seth said in a quiet voice. "Please."

"Bring her to me." The other man ordered instead. Percy caught her by her thick brown hair mostly, and dragged her to where both of them were standing.

After a moment Quincy said to the woman without taking his eyes off of Seth. "I want you to tell our good doctor your name and the nature of your probable crime that would make you the focus of such a vicious retaliation this morning. And spare us your lies. Your lying has gotten you into this in the first place."

"Please. Don't." The woman continued to sob, covering herself where she could. "I just want to go home."

And it all clicked for the Gray Man just then. The man who they'd pistol whipped into submission wasn't the focus of this...whatever _this was_.

This woman was.

"Tell. Him."

"You are right...I shouldn't have lied. Please. I would take it all back if I could. I'll do any—"

Percy twisted and squeezed her hair as tightly as he could manage. "Lady, he's not going to ask you again. You need to talk and fast."

"It will be alright, Miss." Seth said to her. _What are you saying? What the fuck are you doing, you idiot_. "Percy's not going to hurt you, if you do as you've been asked. My name is Dr. Seth Dupree. I'm a surgeon by trade. What is your name?"

The woman looked doubtfully through her smeared mascara from Seth to Quincy to Percy and back again. She didn't bother covering herself anymore. She wiped her tears away instead.

"My name is Amy Kissinger. Four years ago I filed a false police report." She said through a quivering lip and tried to compose herself. "I guess that's what all of this is about."

Seth asked, "A police report?"

"Four years, eight months, and seven days ago I filed a police report stating that I had been raped."

"You did, Amy." Quincy said. "Now tell the doctor the rest."

She did another round of looking and fresh tears littered what would have been otherwise a pleasant face to gaze into. "My lie centered on a man named Stanley Jordan who was a promising young attorney at a law firm I worked at in Atlanta at the time. I was initially going to try to get back a lover who wouldn't leave his wife for me. But when the police pressed me for information I changed my mind and my story and blamed it on Stanley who had been trying to ask me out at work. Stanley was a black man."

Seth actually remembered reading about this story but couldn't piece together how it turned out for young Mr. Jordan.

"Don't stop now, Amy" Percy yanked unforgivingly at her hair again. Seth swore he'd heard several strands rip from her skull. "Tell the doctor what became of your former co-worker."

The woman cried out. She sounded as if she would soon hyperventilate. Seth took a giant leap of faith and step forward when Quincy halted his progress with the back of hand and forearm. He shot him a warning glance and shook his head once and then again.

Amy managed to say, "Stanley committed suicide after spending the first 18 months of a ten year sentence in Calhoun State Prison after the State denied him a retrial."

Quincy said, "And now you and your latest lover will join him in Hell."

The Sargent at Arms of a House in Chains yanked a gun out of the inside of his jacket and blew Amy's brains out of the back of her head. The Peacekeeper who was standing in closest proximity to her man pulled the trigger on him killing the man instantly as well.

All the Gray Man heard over the next few minutes was the echo of the shots rattling around from his eardrums to his brain. The leaves swirled in the wind and his teeth chattered.

Quincy finally said into the ensuing silence, "Well, at least when Amy faces God at her Judgement she can't say that you lied to her Doctor Dupree. Percy didn't harm her after all. He walked by Amy's fallen body, waited for the latest gust of wind to pass and said, "Are you still convinced that all of the wrongs done people of color are from ages long passed?"

"Oh my God..." Seth got in Quincy Morgan's face. He wanted to be absolutely sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. And just like that—there it was—the slightest hint of a smile. "You're enjoying this."

Quincy snatched Seth into his grip, careful to keep the barrel of his gun away from the doctor's temple. For now. The other man's grip was so powerful it nearly lifted Seth off of the pavement.

Quincy snarled at him.

"Do you truly believe what you just said, Doctor?"

"At this point, I don't know what to think of you. Of any of this." He replied back with equal venom."

"You just need to know that this—all of _this_ has to be done." Quincy shoved him away.

And then he did something totally unexpected.

Quincy straightened his wrinkled shirt and ran one of his large hands over his over his nose, mouth, and hairy face.

And then he stopped as suddenly as he had started and checked the time on his watch once again.

"So much more has to be done tonight." He peered out into the nothingness. "Our enemies have us outnumbered and outgunned," Quincy stepped into Seth's shadow, eerily calm. "Can't you see it too, Doctor? This is my people's last chance to right four hundred years of wrongs."

Behind them Percy and the other remaining members of the Peacekeepers seat themselves in the Hertz and methodically wait until they are beckoned by their leader to do otherwise. Quincy extends his arms towards Seth as if he were a valued customer taking in an expensive limo ride around town.

Ten minutes and several blocks later, Seth could barely feel the motion of the engine as the cased Atlanta's streets for a House in Chain's next victim.

The night was still young enough.

Seth asked, "When did it all come apart, Quincy?"

The other man lounged in his seat and closed his eyes.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"When did you lose your humanity?" Seth asked. "No human being short of a narcissistic psychopath could possibly do what you are doing in the past few hours and live with themselves afterwards."

Quincy Morgan slowly opened his eyes, sat erect, nodded and ever so slowly. Seth tried to read his expression as she'd done before in the alley. "You don't. I don't. But you should stick around, Doctor. I have promises to keep. And I always keep my word."
Angel

**Nearing Marta Station (Anderson Avenue SW, 25** th **Day**

The loud, obnoxious, butterball of a biker eased off of the throttle. The wind was shifting. It was coming out of the Northwest now.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree pressed her breast against the leather jacket covering his back and squeezed his manhood and he found the proper motivation to hit the accelerator again. Angel had promised Ted—at least she thought that what his name might have been—a phone call and maybe a date if he got her to the lower Eastside of the city where Mathew Clifton's family lived and _fast._

She was pushing it. The biker—wearing $300 sunglasses in the wee hours of the morning and a $10 tee shirt from K-Mart said that he wasn't going nowhere near one of _their_ neighborhoods, especially tonight, even for a fine piece of ass like hers. He _did_ say he'd get her to the Marta station and she could find her way from there.

Angel had begrudgingly accepted his terms, wrapped her arms around him the way a man would like and held on.

The interstate heading out of the city was a mess. In her many trips to and through the city she'd never seen it slow to a crawl like this, not even during rush hour, after Braves games or even when the Super Bowl was in town. Yellow school buses were packed to capacity with scores of families continuing to evacuate. _Thank God for Xavier's extension._

She'd used a woman's power of tears to lose the FBI Agent instead of shooting him. She knew that at some point she still would be held accountable for what happened next: She'd grabbed his weapon and used the threat of lethal force on his person until he yielded and allowed her to tie him up.

And then Angel left him and her old gun behind.

Now she saw hoards of the homeless loitered around the Central Marta Station as the biker eased off of the brakes and sat his boot heel on the asphalt. She gave him a kiss on his cheek and one last squeeze that promised more in the very near future before turning his attention on the station. She released the safety off of the weapon that she'd lifted off of the Federal Agent, charges be damned at this point.

Angel didn't want trouble.

Actually, she didn't have time for it. Any delay right now would cost lives.

The threat of delay didn't take long to manifest itself.

_Damn you Karma,_ she thought, _Damn you to Hell._

Two heavyset women were stealing aluminum cans out of the basket from a third woman who had soup bowls for lips and table spoons for ears. She was carrying what looked to be a two or three year old in a car seat that she'd hitched to the bicycle seat somehow and made it work.

A minute later it all unraveled.

It became a tussling match with the three women exchanging elbows and curses over the bag of cans. The two year old wasn't helping matters as he began to cry with the pitch growing with each passing minute. Then a _third_ woman came from around a post and expectantly launched herself at the mother who'd had been holding her own against her two beefy pals.

She put her ass in the woman's face cursed at her and told her to shut up while her two friends took what they wanted off her bicycle and her person.

Angel tried to look away. She caught a glance at the digital display that informed her that the scheduled Marta was still six minutes from arriving at this station.

Damn.

_I_ really _don't need this just now. Life was always about the needs of the many—_

"Alright," Angel got the agent's gun out before she talked herself out of it. "Enough, already. The three of you leave this woman and her child in peace."

"Come get a load of this." The First Woman, the heaviest of the assailants who smelled of old tennis shoes said. "I don't remember anyone asking you to get in our business, Whitey."

"Step back," Angel searched for an exit, careful not to back herself into a corner where her _only_ choice was to kill these fools. _Give your attacker an out,_ Christopher had once told her when he had privately trained her to use firearms. "Look, I don't want to hurt any of you, but I refuse to just stand here and do nothing while you rob this woman. Do you have any sense of decency rattling around in those bloated bodies of yours? She's got her baby with her for God's sake."

The third woman, who had entered the fray, lifted herself off of the mother and got to her feet. She was cross-eyed and semi-conscious of it. "Yea, Claire. We'd better back off. I think she means business." She said but didn't mean one damned word of it.

"Yea, Claire, look at me, I'm shaking in my Adidas." The second of the original assaulters said rolling up her sleeves. She wore a tattoo of a cross on each wrist.

Angel looked from one to the other. The woman with the tattoos picked up a broken bottle, the Sitter grabbed a stick and Claire popped out a blade. And yet, she found herself eerily calm even as they approached her.

_When they don't grasp the lifeline you've thrown them, when they refuse to take the out, Angel,_ Christopher's final words of her lesson that day resonated in her ear as if he'd spoken them only minutes instead of years before.

You fucking make their poor choice a fatal one.

"I will shoot you, Claire." _I will gladly add your name to list of those that I have killed._

"You might," Claire said just as calmly. "You still outnumbered though. And I guarantee that one of my girls will get to you. And they'll take this blade and carve those fake ass lips off of your little pale face."

"We sure will, Claire." A voice, a fourth one came from _behind_ her this time. "You know what—she probably wants that baby for herself. That's probably the reason she involved herself in this in the first place."

Angel had checked to make sure no obstacle could box her in, but she failed to make sure there wasn't more unwanted guest to this private party. _I let you down, Christopher. You're my best friend in this world and I'm always letting you down._

Angel muttered a curse.

The four women heard her and found that hilarious.

She could kill Claire and possibly one of the other women in front of her...but her disadvantage would still remain.

If she glanced back—even for a _second—_ she'd be ambushed by Claire and the others.

The first tinge of panic struck in her gut.

Angel hadn't felt this helpless since the first few hours she found herself alone and vulnerable to a fugitive and a killer in Tyson Vincent all of those years ago when she was a teenager.

Claire slowed her approach long enough to say: "Yea, Sweetie, you right, girl. She probably helped kidnap them other little boys anyway."

"What?" Angel hadn't meant to speak her thought aloud. But at least she now understood where the baby taking reference came from. The women had recognized her appearances from the press conferences and clippings from TV."

"Ain't that some shit?" Sweetie added. _Ain't_ that _some shit?_ Angel mocked Sweetie. Just because the woman had to have the last word she'd given away her positioning behind her. The doctor was far from getting out of this unscathed, but her odds of her survival had improved a few percentage points. "This bitch doesn't think we know who she is. The Doctor thinks we are ignorant. She thinks we don't know what's going on in the world."

"I only care if you and your friends are stupid, Sweetie." Angel spun to her left—but she still didn't see the woman who should have been behind her. "I swear if any of you take one more step—"

Sweetie, who must have twisted to the _other_ side just as Angel made her move, belted the doctor across the back of her head and upper neck. Angel's world went spinning out of control and she wanted to get off so very badly.

Angel fired off a round while opportunity allowed her to. She believed she'd struck gold as she heard a thud that only a dead body hitting the concrete makes.

The weapon was knocked from her hand.

And then her plight went from bad to worse.

Angel felt a warm sensation heating up a large area of her calf and she safely assumed that she'd been stabbed at least once there. This probably meant that Claire had cashed in her 25 percent survival ticket when she blindly fired off her lone round.

And the idea that a thieving fat bitch like Claire would be left alive after she was dead pissed her off more than she was frightened at that frozen moment of consciousness. Angel closed her eyes.

And then it was all over.

There were shots:

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

And when Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree opened her eyes again there were dead bodies lying on either side of her.

Angel raised herself as quickly as her pain... and her surprise would allow her. She saw dozens of people scattering away from the scene in every direction including the mother and her child whose rescue Angel had come to in the first place.

And then Angel saw Claire lying on her back a few feet away from her...drowning in a whirlpool of her own blood.

But the question of the early morning was a clear one though: Who had extended the lifeline to her?

Angel heard someone call her name but the sound of it was silenced by the roar of the Marta reaching the station at last.

Who knew six minutes could last for so very long.

She felt faint—not knowing if it was from a loss of blood or from the adrenaline rush from a near death experience.

Angel felt strong...but somehow feminine arms wrap her arms around her to keep her from falling and walked her on to the Marta.

When Angel opened her eyes again she saw Roxanne Sanchez, dressed all in black, seated across from her.

"Roxanne?" Angel said. "Roxanne Sanchez, I never thought I would hear myself say this but I'm so happy to see you. You saved me."

Roxanne didn't return the doctor's smile. "I guess that I did." She said and the Latino woman sat back in her seat. She extended her arms across the back of the seat, the small caliber pistol she'd used to give her a stay of execution rested in her lap. And although it was clear enough for Angel to see it was blocked from the view of the other dozen or so passengers by the way the rows seats in front of them were sequenced.

Angel felt a new round of unease settling in.

Why did she feel one round of ciaos was at an end only for another igniting in this subway car?

"Let me give you a small piece of advice, Doctor," Roxanne said. "I trained with Special Agent Christopher Prince as well. He taught me the same lessons you learned about giving your enemy an out, never backing yourself into a corner...yada...yada...yada. But you forgot one powerful thing that he said. And you of all people should have never forgotten it."

Angel nodded her head. It helped clear out the last remaining cobwebs and brought Christopher's most important words during those lessons.

"Never introduce a weapon of lethal force unless you are planning to use it in the vain." Angel said.

Roxanne nodded silently.

"You're right," Angel said and tried a smile to see if Roxanne would match hers with one of her own. When she did not she said, "You both were." Angel felt for the bump on back of her head. At least there was no blood though. She turned her attention to the wound on her lower leg. The cut was superficial, but would—at least in the short term—cause her limp to become even more pronounced.

When Angel looked up again she found Roxanne Sanchez with her pistol pointed at her.

"What in the hell is this, Roxanne?" Angel asked. "You saved me from those barbarians just...just so you kill me yourself."

Roxanne gave the Marta her full measure before she spoke again in low, dangerous tone.

"I wasn't going to let them deny the prize that is mine by rights. I would have gone through them all to get to you: The FBI, Pandora, and A House in Chains— I would go through the Devil himself in Hell, his own turf, just to get to this moment right here. I've earned this."

Angel sat back in her own seat and took a deep breath but held her silence. She could have used some particularly strong gin right now.

"Like Chris Prince said, Doctor, you never pull a weapon on anyone unless your intention is to use it. And rest assure before this city sees another sunrise I plan this use this gun on you."
Chapter Eighteen

Never forget that our father abandoned us, Roxanne. He was our own flesh and blood. Maybe it's something to do with having to carry around a penis that makes men lie, cheat, give in to their vices and hall ass at the first sign of trouble. I'll never trust a man, Roxanne. And either should you.

Maria Sanchez chastises her sister in 1977.
Chris

**Christopher Prince's private residence, 25** th **Day**

Someone knocked on Christopher Prince's door.

"Who is it? Who's there?" Chris swam up out of sleep. "I said who is it?"

No answer.

Chris pulled out his gun.

"This isn't the time for games."

Another knock.

He stumbled across the floor, his head spinning. He didn't trust his aim if he was forced to fire, but what choice would he have if the anonymous visitor on the other side of his front door intended him harm. After all the crank calls had continued well into the night until he'd yanked the cord out of the wall.

Maybe they thought an impromptu visit would feel far more personable.

Maybe.

So Chris flung his front door open; it barely missing a younger black woman standing outside on his top step with two firearms turned away from him but where he could see them nonetheless.

_Grace?_ Why was Grace Edwards standing at his door at 3am in the morning?

Chris lowered the barrel of his weapon two inches.

"Are you trying to get yourself killed, Grace?"

"Maybe, we'll see." She said putting her own guns away methodically, one at a time so her host was fully aware where she stored them. "I needed to speak with you. Alone. Coming here seemed to be the best option."

"What could you possibly want with me?"

"I've put my guns away. I think that's a start. Why don't you do the same and invite me in."

He lowered his own weapon another inch, but otherwise didn't budge.

"What do you want, Grace?"

"I need your help, Agent Prince."

Grace had aroused his curiosity at the least. She also had induced his suspicions as well. He couldn't be sure which extreme won him over but he led her inside. Chris glanced over his shoulder one last time, looking for an ambush from her associates that never came. He placed his gun in the holster behind him for quick assess.

Chris hadn't completely forgotten his manners: He showed Grace to his comforter. She sat down, smoothed out her pinstriped pants suit and crossed one single leg over the other.

He folded his arms, kept his distance and wore his best confrontational look on his face. "You're a member of the Circle, Grace. There is absolutely no reason that I should trust you."

"Don't be so sure, Agent Prince." She sat up long enough to check her watch. And why was she still referring to him as _Agent_ Prince. Information was Grace's livelihood. Surely she knew that he'd been asked to turn in his badge—"Any minute now you will be receiving a phone call on your business cell. Please answer."

Chris' business cell did indeed ring _seconds_ later.

And yet, the man jumped, startled in spite of himself.

"What kind of game are we playing here, Grace? How could you know..." Chris' voice trailed off while the ringing continued. "Do you know _who_ is on the other end as well?"

Grace said, "Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan."

Chris finally answered his phone on the fifth ring.

"Hello,"

" _Prince_?" Sheridan sounded tired. " _Agent Prince_? _Chris, are you there_?"

"Sorry, sir, it's the middle of the night and being awaken by an unexpected phone call from you has me a little speechless." Chris said honestly. "But I'm here. What's up?"

" _You're right. I apologize for calling you at this hour. Are you alright_?"

"Yea. Yea, I'm good."

" _I have news that couldn't wait until sunrise. I thought that you should hear this directly from me: The higher ups have cleared up this mess up about you and your family. Though we are without an official deputy director, the Justice Department the ruling governing body in matters such as this one has reinstated you as a federal agent with all of the honors and privileges that come with it. Someone over there will be giving a formal announcement to all of the available media outlets at 7am_."

"Really?" Chris had eyed Grace Edwards during the entire conversation.

" _Really, Chris_ ," Sheridan said. " _I need you back on the case ASAP_."

Grace said, "Say yes."

"Where can I help the most, sir?"

" _Locate a House in Chains Command Center. Pronto_. _Your partner knows about your_ _reinstatement and after she ties up a few loose ends she should be arriving at your place within the next couple of hours to pick you up. Time is not our ally_." Sheridan said and sounded as if stopped long enough to take a sip of water or coffee. " _I'm asking you to try and talk some sense_ _into your brother. The extension he provided proves that he's not beyond reasoning. Maybe you can convince him to sever whatever operation he and the Circle may be planning_."

"He _is_ my brother, sir. No one knows him better than I do, so I'll tell you this now so we won't mince words or waste any more time: Xavier is probably well beyond reasoning by now."

Sheridan snorted.

" _You've got to find him and get some reasoning through to him, Agent Prince. I don't care what you have to do, no matter the price we have to pay_."

"And if I _can't_ get through to him?"

Agent Nicholas Sheridan's voice went cold.

" _Then, Agent Prince, you will have to stop him by any means necessary. You will be forced to make the ultimate decision between your family and your duty. I don't anticipate that decision being a problem for you. I'm confident that you will make the right choice."_

"You're right, Agent Sheridan. In fact I already have made my decision." Chris said and found Grace Edward's eyes once again. "And I'll find him. I'll find my brother somehow."

After Chris snapped his phone close he said to Grace, "I'm sure you are responsible for this somehow...and because of that...I should thank you for clearing my name at the least."

Grace nodded once.

"Don't mention it." She stood and smoothed out her pants suit once again. "As I said before, I need _your_ help, Agent Prince. And if we are going to be successful we need to move now."

"Successful?" He asked. "What are you talking about, Grace?"

She stepped in his line of vision.

"You're the only one who can help me save your brother's life."

Chris made coffee. He took his black to finish clearing out the cobwebs. He pushed the sugar and crème towards his guest.

"The more you talk, the more confused I seem to get. Alright, you pulled some strings, called in some favors and got me reinstated to the Bureau. But you must have known that my superiors would immediately order me to bring down the very man that you want to save."

Grace nodded and took a sip of her coffee.

"Your brother's arrest might be the very thing that saves his life. I won't like it but I can live with that."

Chris took a sip of his own. He'd always hated the stuff, but his new drinking hobby made having it a necessity.

He searched Grace's eyes for signs of deception. Intelligence was her business meant that liars and lying was her business as well.

And yet, all he found in those beautiful brown eyes was concern...and something a great deal more _personal_ at stake in all of this. Sure, this plea for his help was about sparing her leader, a man that she'd respected and admired from harm—

"Grace, you are in love with my brother."

She exhaled.

"I am."

"You have my sympathies." Chris said without smiling.

"I'm serious, Agent Prince."

"So am I," Chris had always berated his younger brother for how insensitive he'd been towards the women who had come and gone and come again in his life. He'd adored his boys for sure, but the mother of his children was a little more than a necessary evil in his life.

But now Xavier's questions about matters of the heart back at the church after Denise's funeral made even more sense to him now.

"I believe you, Grace. And for what it's worth, that is the lone reason that I'm not arresting _you_ here on the spot."

"Arresting me?" Grace's voice sparked with a flame of anger. "You wouldn't be in a position to do anything of the sort if I hadn't personally helped you."

"No doubt," Chris replied. "But that doesn't change that the fact that you and your people made a volatile situation even worse with the initial proposition of a deadline for retrieving Atlanta's missing children. Pandora initiated this. No one knows that fact better than I do, but A House in Chains' deadline presented a variable that wasn't there before."

"And what would that be?"

"A deadline is something tangible. Your people made a bad situation worse for everyone involved. Thank you all for the rising tide. There are thousands of lives across this city and country at stake now more than ever before."

Grace stood suddenly. Chris found it highly unlikely that the young woman was used to being lectured, especially by a virtual stranger.

"Point taken, Chris, now drop. It." He could see the veins in neck throbbing. She ran her fingers across her flawlessly arched brows for a moment. "I don't see you trying to take my guns are handcuff me so I gather you're going to let the arresting me part pass. More importantly, are you going to help me or not?"

Chris sat his coffee cup on the counter and strolled off until he found himself standing in front of Hoshi's picture.

Matters of the heart were always the most pressing, the most difficult of them all.

"How imminent is this threat?" Chris spun back around. "And my investigative gut tells me that this threat you speak of doesn't originate from my colleagues or even an assassination attempt by Pandora." He hesitated before he spoke again. "You believe the threat is homegrown. It's Quincy Morgan—or those who maybe loyal to him."

Grace got up and got her purse.

"I've said enough already. I've probably said too much. But I do need an answer from you Chris Prince and I need it right now."

He'd hit on something alright. Chris rubbed on his hairless chin with a thought.

"If Xavier's safely tucked away in my custody can you steer enough members of your Circle away from any retaliation you may already have planned."

"Threats don't mean anything if you're not true to your work." Grace said but looked away. She exhaled audibly. "I'll try, Chris, but you should know that parts of our operation is already under way as we speak. Hundreds of Roosters...hundreds of white people who are directly or consciously responsible for injustices and acts of violence against people of color have or are being culled right now. This campaign began after the initial deadline passed. Don't ask me to speak any more on this matter."

Chris turned away from her so she couldn't see the anguish in his face. He had to contemplate the gravity of what she'd just told him. Now he was faced with a grave decision for the second time in the past few hours.

He should have brought in Serena Tennyson when he'd been given a chance. He should have kept his composure. And yet, he knew that it wasn't every day that a man learns that his father had been alive for a number of years after the world had presumed him dead—wait, it was past time he test a theory of his.

"Grace, do you remember a man named Agent Bass from your days at the academy?"

"Do I?" Grace smiled was a streak of light on a rainy day. "The man hated me. How is the old fart?"

"He's dead," Chris said as a matter of fact. "But my reason for bringing him up is that I remember him bragging to everyone at the bureau outside of your hearing all the time. It's how I first learned about you. He said that you had the most natural gift for absorbing and then deciphering information that he'd ever seen in his four decade career. He told everyone that you knew how to quickly separate fact from fiction."

"He was a good instructor. Despite our differences, I learned a lot from him." Grace walked past the counter to where Chris was still standing next to Hoshi's painting. "You're not bringing up the memory of a dead man for nothing, Chris. What do you have to show me?"

"The only thing that may save a man we both love from continuing a walk towards his own destruction."

An hour later they returned from the school site where the corpse of his dead father, the Caretaker's remains was still where Chris had last seen them. Christopher Prince was surprised that Serena didn't have them removed. She must have been pressed for time just as it seemed that everyone involved in this was. He hoped that was a good omen.

Grace asked if she could use his laptop. Soon after, Chris watched as she typed in an encrypted password and hopped on a secured FBI database that even he didn't have clearance for with relative ease. Her long fingers worked fast but she never looked as if she was hurried. Seconds later a picture of Chris Prince's father, Isaac Prince appeared on his computer's screen in full HD and Chris choked up. Grace had used the information provided by Serena's documents, fed it into the database, and the network had provided a detailed sketch of how his father would have appeared if he were still living today.

The results were astonishing.

"Everything I'm learning from the database tells me that this documentation is authentic." Grace said over her reading glasses. "The dental work, the available DNA strands, even the fingerprints match within a probable 98 to 99 percentile range. I've run it through the system twice so I would be damned sure. What's left of the corpse is Isaac Prince."

"The Caretaker," Chris watcher her reaction and she noted his. She looked away a moment. Grace looked as if she realized that this was more than just data to him—the fact that this was his Dad was starting to sink in to her.

She closed the lap top, pushed away from the dining room table and crossed her legs at the ankles.

"Why do I get the feeling you aren't surprised by this finding, Grace?" He asked her. "You knew somehow."

"I suspected." She admitted to him. "I know that he was your father. I know this must hurt like hell, I respect that, but the professional intelligence officer in me has so many questions for you. How did you know he was there? When—"

"Serena Tennyson asked me to follow her there."

Grace stood up suddenly.

"Tell me that you killed her, Chris." Grace's neck had that strained erectness about it again. "Tell me that you left her body in that old abandoned school with your father."

He could only shake his head.

Grace looked at tile on his floor.

"Again, I'm sorry for you and Xavier, Chris. I know how difficult a time the coming days will be for the both of you." Grace squeezed his arm.

Chris wouldn't tell her about the darker secrets that he'd only shared with Xavier and Angel. He can't share with her where and why a deeper pain in his heart exist with his discovery of his father's remains. He also didn't tell her about the dire diagnosis that his personal physician gave him earlier in the evening. It wasn't any of her business anyway. How can he even begin to trust this woman or his own judgement on these very personal matters entirely?

But Grace Edwards had exhibited her professionalism and expertise through this conversation so far.

It wasn't too late for him to return that professionalism and expertise.

"I take it that you know where Xavier is, or at the least where he _should_ be?"

Grace nodded hesitantly.

"I think I do. Finding him will be the easy part. Getting you past the Peacekeepers, especially his privatized security force won't be as easy."

"Then take me to your leader, Grace."

And then Agent Christopher Prince got busy.

He moved to gather the rest of things that would be needed if the two of them had any chance of pulling this miracle out of the hat. He charged up both of his phones, stored a couple spare clips of ammunition in an old gym bag and filled his wallet with some $100 bills that he had stashed away for a stormy day.

With Grace waiting on this side of his front door, Chris made a final stop next to Hoshi's portrait. He ran the tips of his fat fingers over Hoshi's lips. A part of him wondered if he'd ever see this portrait again. He looked around the room. This apartment was never special to him but it has been his home since he and Denise divorced all those years ago.

He looked towards where Grace Edwards was standing in his foyer past expecting her patients to be well past an end.

What he _did_ see was an unexpected pained look on her forehead.

"Grace, what is it?" He asked her gently as if his voice raised any louder she might crack in its wake. "What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry, Chris. With everything that's going on—especially what you've shown me tonight—I'd completely forgot to fill you in on a very vital detail that will be important to you."

"Shoot,"

"We assigned two Peacekeepers to case the woman your ex-wife hired to find your step daughter."

"Roxanne?" Chris heard his own voice take on a darker tone. Was there _anything_ that a House in Chains didn't have their hands in? "She has nothing to do with 411 or Deliverance or anything else that has to do with your people's business. Leave her alone...oh no, what's happened Grace? What have the Peacekeeper's done to her?"

Chris hadn't realized that he'd grabbed a hold of both of her lean but toned arms. He eased his grip...just a little.

"For once, it isn't about us, Chris. From the information I've been able to gather, Roxanne blames your friend, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree for the death of her sister Yolanda Battle. Tonight, she..." An old school pager lit up red on Grace's hip interrupted their conversation. "We have to move _now,_ Chris. We've got to get out of here _._ " He put the squeeze on her arms once again. "Why, Grace? _What in the hell has happened now?"_

"My sources have informed me that the others are moving quicker that even I anticipated." She said with a calmness that defied logic. "They're going to kill Xavier within the next few hours."

Chris released her and followed her to his front door. They agree that it would be safer for the both of them if they ride in her car instead of his. She'll drive. She knows the way to wherever in the hell they are going, which will save valuable time. Anyway, the extra time that will buy him will help him feel better about getting behind the wheel after his binge last night.

They also agreed to work out any remaining details as they go along, which will be alien two normally very detailed and organized individuals. Well, at least they broke camp before Agent Blue arrived. She must have more than her share of loose ends to tie up as well. It would have been hell trying to explain all of this to his partner anyway.

Chris swung his front door open and beckoned Grace Edwards to exit the premises first.

But to his chagrin, Special Agent Tabitha Blue was standing in the doorway with her hands planted on her hips.
Xavier

**Undisclosed Location, 25** th **Day**

Xavier Prince saw his father.

The old man was seated on Xavier's couch.

_Dad? You shouldn't be here,_ Xavier thought. He _was_ dead after all.

And _this_ version of his father looked younger that the day that he'd died in the traffic accident when both he and Chris were teenagers.

Isaac Prince saw his son out the corner of his eye, flashed a wondrous grin, got to his feet, stood face level to get a long look at his boy all grown up and planted a bear hug on him that neither man would soon forget.

Xavier felt tears biting at the corner of his eyes and he did not fight them and hugged his father back.

When his father released him the old man had did just _that_ : He'd looked as if he'd aged 20 years. Standing before Xavier Prince now was a man who would've likely been his father's age if he'd lived until this year.

His father wrapped his heavy arms around his petite son and said, "I'm so proud of everything that you've accomplished in your life, Xavier." He caressed his son's cheeks which were still wet from tears with his thick fingers.

Xavier fought to compose himself, but he was so damned happy to see his father again after so long. No dream had ever been so powerful. No vision ever this potent.

"Dad, I shadowed your footsteps because I admired you so much and I hoped..." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I hoped to expand on the legacy that you'd built with a House in Chains."

"I know, son," Isaac Prince said, cupping his son's face with both hands. There was strength and a sense of safety to be in his father's grasp, even when Xavier had angered him with his juvenile ways back then. "I also know that it wasn't easy for you. I know you followed my footsteps because your brother Christopher wouldn't."

Somewhere Xavier's song began to play.

Xavier looked to his left, then to his right and finally behind him, but failed to hear where the melody of _Death is in the Air Tonight_ was coming from.

Xavier _did_ hear his boys sweep through the living room in a youthful rush of legs and a cloud of laughter and teasing. He caught his youngest by the collar, preparing to chastise them for not speaking to any adult, yet alone their grandfather who was standing there in the living room.

But Isaac Prince had turned into a pile of dust.

He kneeled over the pile and let his fingers run through the sand that was once his father—and shook his head once and again. Had he imagined that he'd seen Isaac? Had he dreamed it? Was he _still_ dreaming?

When Xavier stood again his oldest son had stopped his running about long enough to say, "Why don't you put your work aside long enough for a few minutes and come outside and toss the football around a bit before the game comes on."

Xavier felt the muscles supporting the frown on his face relaxing. He laid the briefcase (that he hadn't remembered holding before now) down on the couch where his father had been sitting before.

And he also wondered was that really his oldest boy who'd asked about the game of catch because he looked more like his younger son would have a few years from now.

Whichever one of his sons it might have been needed to turn the volume of the radio down...

...but his sons, like most kids their age, adored hip-hop. They wouldn't be listening to an instrumental—especially a track as monotone as _Death is in the Air Tonight._

His boys called to him again. He heard them even over the song. So he let his happy face return and angled to his bedroom to fetch a pair of sneakers before it got dark outside.

Candlelight greeted him when he closed his bedroom door behind him. Wasn't it the late afternoon only seconds ago? He shook the latest oddity away and started to open his closet when a whiff of perfume caught his senses with a pleasant surprise.

He turned back to where the bed should be (how could he be sure of anything at this point), and saw Grace Edwards lying across the length of the bed. She was older than when he last saw her, perhaps middle aged, but her tight figure, soft brown skin, and beautiful face still remained intact.

She wore a huge diamond wedding band on the appropriate finger, a tight smile and _nothing_ else. He returned his wife's smile with one of his own. He heard her ask him to come to bed and join her. Xavier looked back over his shoulder where his children might or might not have been waiting in the yard for him to come out and play with them. Yet, a peek at the window sill verified that it was indeed dark outside and they would be in the house fooling around in their rooms before it officially bedtime.

Xavier aloud himself a quick laugh. He fumbled with his tie, kicked off his loafers, and inched towards his wife slowly until their lips touched at long last.

_A Death in the air tonight_ blared louder and louder but Grace seemed oblivious to it at least. It was nearly deafening to his ears but he could hear her moans of pleasure after he entered her.

The music be damned.

He would not let it steal _this_ moment of pleasure from him and the woman who loved him so.

And with each thrust the music lessened and his wife's shrieks of pleasure grew louder.

They climaxed simultaneously and he heard Grace Edwards Prince scream out his name—

And then Xavier awoke with someone unfamiliar calling his name.

"Get up, sir." And the voice was more insistent. " _Get. Up_. Xavier Prince if you want to live, sir."

Xavier sat up as if he were shot out of a canon in a cold, uncomfortable sweat resting on his temple.

The memory of the dream was vivid in his thoughts...but the recollection of what he was doing before he dozed off might have proven more useful to him. Yes, he'd been listening to a brilliant instrumental with a deliciously dark melody to it that someone had sent to him as a gift. It was no denying that it was the same composition that he'd heard when he and Brother Chris had their last conversation together in the church's bathroom.

It was also the same song that had played like his personal theme song during the three phases of his dream when he saw his father alive, his boys altered and made love to the wife version of Grace Edwards.

"We have to get you out of here _now_."

"What?" Xavier said. And when one of his personal security details grabbed him by the shoulder he did not flinch. " _Take your hands off of me._ I'm not going anywhere with you until somebody explains what in the hell is going on here."

Two younger men eyed each other anxiously. The one on the left looked as if he'd played a game of Russian roulette and loss the other could have been a firecracker on the Fourth of July he was moving about so much.

Gunshots peeled off in the distance of the compound. Xavier stood then. The Russian leaned over and cleared his throat.

"Ms. Edwards assigned us directly to the task of protecting you, sir. We need you to trust us as you would trust her. _They_ are ready to execute an assassination attempt on your life, sir. We have to move you to a preordained place of safety and we have to do it right now."

Firecracker hopped around, took a quick glance out of the door.

"They've been planning this coup since your release from Calhoun State Prison, sir."

"You two keep saying _they."_ Xavier said as the third man, a man who looked as if he knew one joke and told it often, nearly blanketed his smaller frame with his much larger one. "W _ho_ does Grace suspect has been planning this?"

The Joker said from behind him as he pushed Xavier forward. "Look sir, your Number 2 has taken control a majority stake in the Peacekeepers, especially many of the principal admirals and lieutenants. Make no mistake, sir, you have allies, but we are outnumbered and outgunned, especially in this compound. I am prepared to exercise _any_ method necessary to relocate you to a safer locale.

Russian smiled and laid a hand on his partner's shoulder. "All three of us will be more than happy to accept any disciplinary measures you find necessary afterwards, sir." He gave a final look out of the door before they all exited never to return to this room. "Number One, if you will kindly join us?"

Xavier nodded and thanked each man for their help.

How the three four of them maneuvered through the labyrinths of rooms and hallways and corridors was something Xavier would have to figure out later if he lived long enough. He would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that he'd visited every square inch of this place, but quickly was realizing how inaccurate his assessment to mere size of this facility they'd secretly built hidden but in plain sight really was.

Grace Edwards had worked out this escape route even without his consent or input in order to aid in keeping him safe. Each room along the route was supplied with food rations in case they were pinned down here by a Pandora or FBI incursion. Weapons are also on demand in case they were involved in a fire fight.

Xavier's security detail used a moment of pause to fill their clips with ammunition that would feed a small hungry army.

And then they saw the damage done from what they'd heard earlier.

Joker led the way as they stepped over scores of dead bodies of Peacekeepers that had littered the hallways. He recognized a handful of them. Curiosity bested him for a minute: Who had fought for him and who against?

This time Firecracker nudged him forward. He silently thanked Grace Edwards again. She was a genius indeed. She had chosen his protectors well.

Twenty minutes later Xavier heard one of the two men behind him whisper with some anxiety that they were nearly through this maze. Xavier couldn't tell which one it was. He just followed Joker and kept his eyes pinned in front of him. He still hoped whichever of the men made the statement knew what he was talking about.

And he hoped Grace had been thoughtful enough to leave him a pack of smokes when they cleared this structure and the immediate danger had passed.

Joker pushed him against the wall and with eye contact only, encouraged Xavier and the other two Peacekeepers to mirror his sliding motion along the wall while staying low. They continued along with their slide for about 20 feet when Xavier saw—light.

It wasn't much in the way of light, but any light at this point meant they were nearing the end of this perilous journey and the freedom of the outside world was one last door away.

Firecracker took the lead this time; and with his rifle drawn opened the last door which nearly blinded them with the intense light of the Atlanta morning.

And when Xavier's pupils had adjusted to the new sensations they were exposed to—he saw Warren Washington standing in his path with a semi- automatic gun in each of his hands.

Xavier's boys didn't waste time or movement as they drew all of their weapons on the lone wolf denying their exit in one incredible heartbeat.

The leader of a House in Chains had to suppress a smile.

This was far too easy.

Something—perhaps a sixth sense urged him to look just over his left shoulder. And he saw movement in the shadows on the far side of the courtyard.

And then another moved.

And another still, until dozens of Peacekeepers he was sure were not loyal to him had descended and the four of them from all directions until they were completely surrounded. In addition, their enemies had nearly every model of firearm pointed at them.

Grace's efforts were to be commended. And these three men who would die with him were more than honorable, but the seeds of this betrayal were rooted deeper than any of them would have believed.

He refused to be "protected" any longer. He shook the hand of each of the men who had tried to aid in his escape and stepped to the point.

"Warren," Xavier called out to the former athletic star. "I should have known you would be involved in this. I _did_ know in fact. So here I am. So here you are. I'm not surprised that Quincy Morgan sends his lapdog to execute his dirty work for him."

Warren swallowed hard but otherwise remained still and silent—for now.

"You call it dirty work," It was Quincy Morgan's voice over bellowing from speakers whose central location was a place Xavier could not centralize. "I call it cleaning up, Number One. We are at a necessary end. And yes, someone must always do what is necessary especially when it concerns our people moving forward."

"Quincy," Xavier looked over the courtyard's walls onto the horizon. "Don't lecture me and don't take the coward's way out of this. Be half the man you claim to be and show yourself."

"I'm sorry, Number One, but that won't be practical or possible." Quincy replied. A strung gust a smoke enhanced wind blew in. "Right now I am in the process of getting a lot done on a very tight schedule. But rests assure that I wouldn't miss this important transition of power for the world."

"So by killing me you hope to gain power, authority and status over a House in Chains?" Xavier asked the absent man. "Have you forgotten the Visionaries? I know that the everyday Joe Citizen who makes up the vast majority of our ranks. I know what they have meant to this movement—my father's movement over the years. Do you think they will follow you when they learn how you betrayed me? You will need all of the Peacekeeper's strength and numbers to fight them all off."

"Under normal circumstances I would agree with you, Number One. But you're only skimming the surface of what my real intentions are."

Xavier listened to Quincy but watched as a female Peacekeeper disarmed his three protectors of their weapons. If they weren't truly defenseless before they were now.

"Speak quickly," Xavier swallowed bile. "You have my attention and I am in no rush to go anywhere right now."

Quincy continued: "Number One, you have been our great leader. You have raised your father's name to new heights and sealed his legacy within our House. You should be commended. Well done."

"You should kill me now, Quincy," Xavier said dangerously. "I will not tolerate being mocked by the likes of you."

"I'm not mocking you. How could you ever accuse me of showing you such malignant disrespect? I admire you, Xavier. No one else—myself included—could have placed a House in Chains in this position to excel well past even your father's mandates and goal. I can think of no one else in this world but you, sir."

"And yet, you want to kill me today, Quincy. And you've gone through a lot of trouble to pull it off."

"You are wrong again. I don't wish to do anything of the sort, my friend. You are the brother I never had. This experience is heartbreaking to me. I won't soon forget the horror of this day." _You aren't the only one._ And yet Xavier found Warren Washington standing before him teary eyed. Quincy's choice sounded as if it were choking up with each passing sentence. "I want you know that all of your strengths in leadership and character were invaluable during peacetime."

"And the peace has passed?"

"It has, Xavier. Pandora and to a lesser extent, our own government has pushed us into a less civilized age. In fact that new barbaric age is upon as even as we speak."

"Educate me, Quincy." Xavier said in all seriousness. "I don't fully understand your meaning."

Quincy seemed to be collecting his thoughts and his voice. After a minute of uncomfortable silence he continued:

"I mean to say that there are heartless men and women out there, lost souls, born for one reason only: They are born to lead troops onto the battlefield, into the heart of Hell itself."

"Are you so heartless?" Xavier asked his former Number Two. He waited on the man that he begrudgingly had trusted with his life. "Are you truly so lost?"

"I am," Quincy's voice went silent again. Xavier had decided that if Quincy was acting then this was an Oscar worthy performance. He did finally return at last, his voice transformed into something fragile and nearly unrecognizable. Could this hard, unyielding man truly be grappling with true emotion right now? "You are a grown man, Xavier. I won't tell you how you should think or feel in your last minutes on this Earth. But I do want you to know that I do love you as a man would love his own blood brother."

"Brothers who love each other don't slaughter one another in cold blood."

"It's either murder my brother or allow him to fail a House in Chains in her House's greatest hour of need. I love you, Xavier but I love the House you built more."

Xavier scanned the courtyard once again feeling that Quincy's monologue was at long last coming to an end. He felt the minute hairs on the nape of his neck rising in the cool, brisk breeze. He felt a mix an emotions: Xavier still had a dozen guns trained on him so his fear was still prevalent but his anger was gaining a foot hole inside of him; the anger that consumed him when the news arrived on his teenaged doorstep that his father had been killed and that his brother Chris had gone missing. And the anger turned to fury when those white boys at Princeton had left him out to rot on specially designed X just for him.

" _What are you people waiting for?"_ Xavier shouted to every Peacekeeper who had dared to betray him. He took a purposeful step towards Warren. "I won't plead for you to spare these men who sided with me because I know that you will not. I won't beg for my life because I've sworn to myself that I won't give you the satisfaction—"

"Begging is the last thing that I want you to do, Xavier." Quincy wasn't finished chiming in after all. "You've heard the man, Warren. I need you to serve our cause not any man in particular. Do what's better for our House, for our race."

Warren raised his shotgun with remarkable quickness. _So this is how it ends._ And then he fired a single shot that blew past Xavier's right ear into the head into one of his protectors. He matched his initial precision by firing twin shots and killing the other two men.

The next time he squeezed the trigger he would launch a round into his forehead killing him a second or two thereafter.

Xavier could feel the dozen or so Peacekeepers who had sided with Quincy Morgan tensing without looking at them. They may have disagreed with his policy, but they wanted this exhibition to end as soon as possible.

Xavier flashed back to the scene back at Calhoun Prison when he and Julian Moore held Michael Davenport's life in their hands just like his own life rested in Warren Washington's. He remembered hoping that Davenport would provide the information that they had needed and that he wouldn't have to order Julian's Black Knight's to kill the rooster on the hard, prison floor.

All of those previous grievances seemed petty now.

"I know that we talked about this, Quincy," Xavier was unsure of which shook more: Warren's lips or the shotgun wielded from his fingertips. "I want to end this like we planned. I want to obey your command."

"Then simply obey it then, Warren." Quincy's voice remained patient and calm—at least for now. "I remember you asking...I remember you _begging_ me for the right to complete this task. You told me it would be and honor to rid our organization of Xavier's smugness, of the stench of stale cigarette smoke clouding every room we were closed up with him." Quincy exhaled audibly over the microphone wherever he was. "How many times has this man embarrassed you in front of the others in the Circle? You owe this man like no one else in that courtyard. Do it now, Warren. Kill Xavier Prince now."

"I can do this."

"I said do it now, Warren."

"I _will_ do this."

" _Do it now."_

"I'm sorry for all of this, Number One." Warren said...and then he did something that Xavier could have never anticipated—

Warren Washington threw the shotgun aside, pulled a small caliber pistol from somewhere inside of his jacket, turned the barrel on his _own_ temple and fired his final efficient shot into his own forehead.

Xavier didn't bother going for the shotgun, but he slowly kneeled to where Warren Washington had fallen to the courtyard's concrete canvas.

Warren had died instantly.

But he wasn't the only one.

Behind Xavier, a half dozen other Peacekeeper's adapted Warren's inspirational but fatal move as their own as they committed a very loud and a very violent suicide as well.

Xavier got on his knees and screamed in anguish towards the heavens above.

And then he got to his feet and was pacing feverishly around the courtyard, while six remaining Peacekeeper's kept their weapons trained on him, but otherwise allowed their former leader his space.

"Warren's dead, Quincy. Six of your loyal troops joined him in eternity by their own hand. At the moment, I don't see anyone else rushing to take the lead in carrying out your commands. You've failed. Do you hear me you miserable traitor, you've _failed."_

" _Warren_ failed," Quincy said with an air of confidence that unnerved Xavier at his core. "And to some degree or the other every Peacekeeper—both dead and still alive—has a bond with you. I can forgive that. I understand that. I've _planned_ for that contingency."

" _Quincy."_

"Like I said I prepared myself for all contingencies. So I recruited an understudy. I recruited a strong, courageous, coldly calculated person to pick up the pieces and put it all back together again if it became absolutely necessary. It's never easy to find someone just like _me_ but I did."

Xavier had that cold inkling a fear running from his shoulder blades down his spine.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw the boy from the college who Grace Edwards had introduced him to when the Circle had its first meeting together in the days after he was released from Calhoun Prison.

Mario Stalls walked into the courtyard from a nearby gate, strolled by the Peacekeepers as if they were nearly six separate parts of the landscape. He slowed just long enough to scoop up two of the many idle guns from the fallen and both of his guns on Xavier in milliseconds.

Quincy made an announcement: "Sometimes you _do_ have to send a boy to do a man's job."

Xavier showed the boy a single palm.

"You're going to want to be careful with those, son." He said. "You have two potentially lethal weapons in your possession. Neither one of us wants to see anyone get hurt do we?"

"If you truly believe that, then you are more pathetic than I already believe you to be, Xavier." Quincy said. "Mario knows all too well what to do with those guns. I've trained him well."

"He has, sir," Mario said. His eyes were like cold steel. "I'm sorry sir, but I'll do what I must."

Xavier Prince had once heard that when a man's death is impending that his life flashes before him.

_And I believe that is what the dream that I had just hours ago—my life...what it was...what it is... and what it_ could _have been flashing before me before I met my end._

He heard his father tell him with his gruff voice one last time how proud of the man he'd become.

He heard his boys ask him to sit his work aside and toss the football around before the game came on.

He heard Grace Edwards invite him into her bed to make love to her again—for the first time.

He heard _Death is in the air playing in his head._

And then Xavier Prince, the One, the most dangerous man in the world heard Mario Stalls fire his killing shot at him.
Serena

**Undisclosed Location, 25** th **Day**

The former director of the FBI said, "Thank you for coming on such short notice, Serena. I apologize for my choice of locales but it will have to do."

Serena Tennyson pulled her hands out of the windbreaker's pockets and folded them.

"Anything for you, Guardian," She said. "I need to be here for you, for Pandora—especially now."

_Death was in the air tonight._ Rice paced in a semi-circle around a small space in the alley. The place stank of discarded food, garbage and mold. And when the wind gusted just right...the stench of burning flames nearly consumed the senses.

It was _wondrous._

Guardian had chosen this place of reunion well. The banks of the Chattahoochee River were a stone's s throw from where they were standing right now. Three decades ago Muhammad Clark had tossed more than one of his victims into a watery grave. Caretaker had witnessed two of the incidents himself.

Tonight she'd come unarmed as show of good faith even over Rohm's persistent protest. She reminded Danielle that she'd already seen herself in the flames. Tonight didn't have that feel of finality—at least not yet.

But she _did_ have that feeling that the flames had cleansed another of his burdens tonight.

She could _feel_ it in her marrow.

She heard the rattle of automatic gunfire in the distance. _I am not beyond making errors in judgement. If tonight_ is _the night then I am ready._ And in that instance she heard the whine of an ambulance soon followed the gunfire.

"I've gone over this thing countless times in my head since we've last spoken, Serena." He finally stopped pacing long enough to look up at her. "I want Xavier Prince dead. As soon as we confirm his passing—and I do mean that I want to see a body—I want the remainder of this campaign to cease and desist."

"Sir—"

Rice waved a dismissive hand at her so she would remain silent.

"All other losses are deemed acceptable to me at this point. I've come to realization...and not for the first time—that when the clock moves beyond the Zero Hour that you and I will be forced to call Xavier's bluff or we can fold. Continuing along the first path likely will lead us towards a massacre if not an annihilation people of color in this country. I'm talking _genocide,_ Serena. I will not stand by and watch the country that I love go down in history with the likes of Rwanda or Kosovo. It can't come to that, Serena."

"And what of the Caretaker's vison? What about his personal sacrifices—

"I don't think Isaac Prince envisioned what we have in store for his people if this escalation of hostilities continues."

Serena stepped into his shadow and squeezed his shoulder. "If we don't complete our mission now—

" _What,"_ The Guardian snapped at her. He tugged at the collar that seemed to squeezing every bit of oxygen out of his windpipe. "Are there sure of the consequences to come? I'm sure that there will some. Perhaps a House in Chains slips through this time. Perhaps they grow in stature and power as a result. I don't care. They don't have the numbers or the logistical means to overcome us. What difference will it make if we wear them down over the next five years instead of eliminating them in one decisive blow tonight?" He shook his head wildly. "I've made my decision. I can live with it. My conscious is clear. It's over. All of this is _over_."

"I understand all too well." Serena replied with a brittle tone that she did not mask. "My question to you is this: will you be able to live with the piles of bodies on both sides that have and will continue to die in vain with no resolution to this conflict in sight? Will that satisfy that conscious of yours _as_ _well?"_ She snapped back, the ferociousness in her voice surprising its speaker.

Rice did a half turn.

"Serena...Adrian Browner is dead. Gwyn Cannon and a man she was planning to spend the evening with were also found murdered. Dozens more of Pandora's friends, business associates, vendors, allies and other supporters have turned up dead or missing in the past four to five hours across the nation. It is time for us to let this go."

Serena searched his face for clarity.

"Your decision disappoints me."

"I'm sorry that you feel that way, Serena."

"You should feel more than just sorrow," Serena stood at her full height and put her balled fist on her hips. "You should die for your insolence. I thought you believed in death before dishonor. I came here with the expectation of receiving punishment for any and all failures I was responsible for. But here...at the end...it is _you_ who have failed me—failed _him."_

"Serena—"

"If there is one lesson that I've always learned it is this: Great men do what they _have_ to, no matter the personal cost. Isaac Prince gave up his life figuratively and then literary so that his people would someday know peace while achieving dignity while they did so. He sacrificed his own son to start the process because he thought his actions would ultimately _save_ lives. My own father—"

"Your father murdered your mother and killed himself because he was a _coward_ , Serena. He was a coward and a failure." Raymond Rice said in a sad voice.

Serena snatched him by the collar and pulled him in a single, violent motion as close to her face as she could.

"My father was no coward. He was a tactician and a believer in the Dragon."

"What?"

"My father's investments all tanked within a 24 hour period as you say. We'd lost everything... _everything._ The only value his life had left were the insurance policies."

He tried to pull away from her vice like grip but was unsuccessful.

"Often, you can't collect on insurance policies if you commit suicide."

Serena nodded sadly, her grip loosening a bit.

"I know that. My father's last scam failed to work. I would not collect my parent's insurance policies. I would not be taken care of as per my father's wishes. And I would live the rest of my childhood alone even in the company of foster family after foster family.

"I'm sorry." Rice unlatched himself from her grip until he was free at last. "I understand now more than ever why you seek out such isolation. You must have been so very lonely."

"I didn't ask for you pity." She said. "I _do_ ask you to reconsider your decision. You are sacrificing everything that we've worked for, everything that we've accomplished so far—"

"Serena, I have made my decision." He said in a tired voice. "I'm asking you to drop this now."

"Then you leave me no choice but to relieve you of command." She said. "It is not often a man loses two jobs in a 48 hour period, but you leave me no choice. Go home, sir. You don't belong here."

Rice pointed a finger at her.

" _That will be enough out of you, Oracle. You are out of line."_

"And you are _pathetic."_

Raymond Rice reached into his right jacket and produced a gun.

Serena laughed; it was a curt, pathetic sound. How didn't she feel that piece of steal when she had him in her grasp only minutes before?

"Maybe I am pathetic." Rice pushed his glasses up, but kept the pistol's eye focused on her. "Yet, despite all of your bravado and proclamations, I _am_ still in command of Pandora. I am still where the Caretaker left me when he died all of those years ago. I'm not asking for your love, Serena—hell, I'm not even asking for your respect. But if you loved Isaac Prince and all he stood for as much as you claim that you do you will stand down. I am giving you a direct order to cease and desist. If you disobey me at any point from the moment forward, then you are betraying the Caretaker's memory."

Both of them glared at the other while they each took deep breaths.

Guardian coughed and spat. Serena turned her back to him.

"You have been my have been my number two, but I haven't kept you in the loop about _everything._ More wheels are churning than you think. We walk ever closer towards a tragic path that we soon may not be able to pull back from—"

"No," She snorted but had not turned back to face him—yet.

"What—"

"I said _no._ You just admitted to me that you haven't told me everything that I need to know about our own operation. I'm done with you. I am refusing to recognize your authority."

Raymond Rice pulled the hammer back and pointed his gun in the space between her eyes.

"You believe you have power when the the only advantage that gun gives you is the gift of _choice."_

He snorted.

"And what choice is that, Serena?"

"You can both resume command and order me to continue my duties...or you can betray _me_ and kill me where I stand. The choice is yours alone."

"I don't want to have to kill you, Serena."

"I've always been willing to take responsibility for whatever came next in my life, sir. My father introduced me to accountability. Isaac Prince taught me to make it apart of who I am." Serena showed him her back again and began to step away. "I'm carrying on in my attempt to complete the Caretaker's mission. Only death will stand between me and completing this."

" _Stop, Serena."_

"Goodbye, Raymond."

"I am _commanding_ you to stop."

Serena Tennyson took two steps...and then a third... and then—

A shot was fired.

She falls to her knees with a _scream._

Serena finds that her heart is beating at an alarming rate. She can feel her pulse racing in her ears and she is struggling to contain her breathing.

And yet, everything on her body seems, at first glance, to be intact. She doesn't see any blood either.

Guardian was lying face first on the asphalt.

Now she sees blood. She sees a pool of blood spilling out from underneath Rice's carcass. A single gunshot wound to the back of his head initiated the gushing action of blood and brains.

Serena falls to her knees. She attempts to turn him over, but his _dead_ weight nearly topples her over. She screams for the second time in many minutes. Tears flow freely from her eyes.

" _No,"_ She rests her head on his chest where only a hollow, empty silence greets her in return. _"Don't die. I wanted you dismissed not dead, Guardian._ You were right about me, Guardian. I am so alone. Everyone that I love keeps leaving me behind. If someone loves you, why would they do that? Why would they leave you _behind?"_

Serena heard footsteps marching through the alley from the direction where the kill shot originated. Her first instinct—a protective one—urges her to get to her feet and sprint to the exit through the slim opening by the dumpsters in the back.

A second—more forceful instinct—advices her to collect the still armed firearm resting within her range and shoot anyone who dares emerge from the shadows.

She fails to do either.

Serena Tennyson can only lie on Raymond Rice's chest, mixing her tears with the dead man's blood.

"Serena?" A small, familiar voice called out to her. "Serena, can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

She shrugged off Rohm's tiny hand when the younger woman tried to massage the small of her back.

"Don't touch me," Serena said in a barely audible voice. "You promised to stay behind, Danielle. You told me that you trusted me to handle this alone. You lied to me."

Rohm went to one knee and dared to run her fingers through Serena's hair. With her petite figure and her deep dark clothing, Rohm was barely visible in this dark ally. She was the perfect assassin. She _was_ a perfect assassin.

"I did just that, Serena. I did. I lied. And I would do it again and again to protect you, to protect our work that is still to be done."

"You took him away from me."

"I saw things getting out of hand. I saw Ryan pull a gun on you, which means he didn't live up to his end of the agreement between you. He brought a deadly weapon to this meeting...and I just wanted to make sure that you were as adequately armed."

Serena looked up at last and Rohm gently pulled enough red hair back to plant a kiss on her forehead.

"You are our leader. You are a Prophet. I wasn't going to allow him to take you away from us—from me. There are still far too many innocent lives at stake. We still have much work to do. Will you join me?"

Serena felt her heart rate decelerating. She swiped at her tears and ties her long red hair back in a single motion. Rohm stands and offers her tiny hand, which Serena accepts and rises to her full height overlooking the younger woman. Rohm uses the opportunity to pull Serena close—and squeezed her tightly.

Serena finds herself returning the embrace. _Perhaps I am not alone after all._

"I'll never leave you, Serena. I promise."

Serena nodded. A quick gust of smoky wind dries the remainder of her tears. She inhaled deeply and stepped next to the spot where Ryan died.

"We should place his body next to Isaac's in the school. The Guardian should join the Caretaker. Together they will rest for an eternity?" The mere sound of the suggestion soothed her heart.

Rohm said, "I will see to your wishes."

Serena snapped open her cell phone and made a few calls explaining Raymond Rice's untimely death to a few high ranking friends, allies and associates of Pandora.

She made no mention of Rice's acknowledgements of plots and plans that were going on outside of her knowledge and consent.

She would learn _all_ of the truths in due time.

"Rohm, show Ryan's body all of the dignity and respect that it deserves, but I need you to move swiftly." Serena said. "We have to finish what we've started."

And then when a House in Chains was put to rest, Serena vowed to find those who would betray the ideals of Isaac Prince.

There is Death in the air tonight.

And this night marked the first of many deaths to come.
Chris

**Near Underground Atlanta, 25** th **Day**

"Turn left at the next red light." Grace Edwards sat up and pointed in the appropriate direction from her seat the back. "We're almost there."

Special Agent Christopher Prince watched as his partner Agent Tabitha Blue snorted and twisted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. She took her eyes off the road long enough to roll her eyes at him, but she whipped the car in generally direction and fed the gas once they were headed west.

Chris whistled a curt tune to ease the tension in the car between the two women, but knew his efforts were probably in vain. He sipped at his coffee from his mug between verses.

"Alright," Blue said. "Someone explain to me why I'm taking orders from a member of the Circle. And while that _someone_ enlightens me about that I would love my curiosity to be satisfied on why we don't have this woman under arrest by now."

"The explanation is simpler than you think, Tabitha," Chris exhaled through his nose. He rubbed the skin between his eyes. "Sheridan gave the two of us explicit orders to locate the leaders of a House in Chains. Ms. Edwards, as you've so correctly stated, is a member of the Circle. We are doing our duty. And who could be better suited at leading us to my brother?"

Blue shook her head. "I'm not buying her story, Chris, and you shouldn't be buying it either." Blue noted the heavy pedestrian traffic on the streets down here and eased off the gas a bit, but laid on the horn. "Look, from the Circle's point of view, what she is contemplating is nothing short of treason. Tell me why would she betray a House in Chains _now,_ especially with their self-imposed Zero Hour—their moment of glory, closing in?"

Grace chimed in.

"First of all, I would appreciate if the both of you stopped talking about me as if I weren't here." Chris looked at Grace in the mirror. She straightened out her collar and pointed a long finger left when they arrived at the next intersection. Chris noted exactly where they were: This so compound sat perilous close to the main entrance of Underground Atlanta." Secondly, this agreement was between Agent Prince and me. The chances of us achieving our objectives were slim at best." Grace focused her attention to the driver's side of the car. "Your presence, Agent Blue, lowers our probability of success greatly."

Blue glanced back and frowned.

"How terrible for you,"

Chris buttoned his shirt at the sleeve, avoiding eye contact with his partner where he could.

"I gave her my word, Blue."

"And what about the oath you swore to the Bureau? The oath you swore to your country." Blue took the next curve hard and spun the wheels.

Chris leaned over to the driver's side.

"I don't know quite how she did it, Blue, but if it wasn't for Grace Edwards I wouldn't be reinstated into the Bureau in the first place. You and I wouldn't even have this opportunity to nip this madness coming in the bud. Blue, if it wasn't for Grace, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation at all."

Blue seemed to sniff the air between them. She didn't care for it at all.

And then she sniffed it again, as is she was testing the same air for a hypothesis of hers.

"I don't believe this; I don't believe what my own senses are telling me." Blue said as she pulled over and slunk down in her seat.

"What?" Chris wanted to know.

"Have you been... _drinking,_ Chris?"

Chris knew when he didn't answer immediately that this conversation would quickly go south. Blue threw the transmission into drive again, crossed over two lanes, and cut into traffic. Several angry drivers took out their frustrations by laying heavily on their horns. Chris watched as one driver sped up to match their velocity and gave Blue the finger. Blue flashed her badge and her overbite. Grace sighed, crossed her long legs and sat back in the backseat.

"Answer my question, Agent Prince; have you consumed alcohol over the past few hours?" Blue asked.

Chris sipped at his cold coffee.

"I have."

Blue promptly slammed a balled fist on the stirring wheel.

Grace mouthed a curse.

"We're wasting time, Agent Prince; your partner's temper tantrums bring us no closer to achieving our objectives."

Chris ignored Grace. If they were going to find his brother in time they needed Blue's cooperation.

"I've had a trying time. I'd been relieved of my duties among some other far personal things that have gone on in my life. I had no reason to think that I was going to work Bureau business tonight or _any_ night ever again. And then Grace shows up. I'm suddenly reinstated. You know the rest. I'm okay, really. I can do this."

"I don't believe that I'm involved in this." Blue kept shaking her head. "I don't believe I let you talk me into this."

Suddenly, Agent Blue stopped just long enough to slam the transmission into reverse.

"Where are we going?" Grace asked.

"I'm turning this car around, Missy, and driving us towards the FBI field office. I'm letting someone else figure this out. It's not too late in the game for someone to debrief both of you—"

"No, you aren't going to do anything like that." Chris said in a calmer than he actually felt.

"Agent Prince," Blue said. "I don't see an alternative—"

Chris laid his right hand on the steering wheel.

"Tabitha, have ever known me to ask you or anyone else for anything?"

"Dammit, Chris, don't make this personal. This isn't about just me and you."

Chris squeezed the wheel tighter and reached across her with lighting speed pinning her hand under his.

"Answer my question, Blue."

After she pulled over to the shoulder again all three of the passengers seemed to stop for breath and composure. Blue glanced out the rolled down window into the smoky Atlanta night. She flashed Grace Edwards a dirty look and finally found her partner's eyes once again.

"No, Chris, no you haven't asked me or anyone else we both know for anything as long as I've known you." To his surprise she added, "And you've taught me everything that I know about being the best FBI Special Agent that I can be. You were the one who taught me about being a professional."

Chris nodded.

"Where does loyalty fit into those lessons?"

"Dammit," Blue said again. "I'm pleading with you not to go there. Look, Chris, I've never seen you like this before. I've never witnessed a time where I didn't think you weren't in absolute control no matter how bad a situation seemed."

"I've never found my ex-wife and step daughter dead within days of one another. I've never had a blatant lie about my personal life broadcasted on the six o clock news. And I've never had my brother's life be put in imminent danger."

And I never had to learn that my father not only faked his death, but evolved into the leader of Pandora while he handed me over to a pedophile.

And I never learned that I may have six months to a year to live.

"And his brother's life," Grace added in a bitter tone. "Which I believe may have been snuffed out minutes ago while we sit and catch up on a little history, has been threatened by very dangerous—very powerful men in my organization."

Blue dropped her eyes.

"Alright I'm in." She waved a halfhearted scolding finger at him. "But you're going to write the paperwork on all this.

Chris smiled for the first time in hours.

"Of course,"

They were ten minutes into their methodical trek through the corridors leading to this underground bunker which Chris guessed was somewhere within a mile or so of Underground Atlanta, mere blocks from the FBI field office downtown. To construct this location in plain sight was brilliant enough—audacious enough to be the brainchild of the woman leading them through the halls of this place. Grace Edwards was a formidable presence to say the least. It must have taken countless dollars and resources to design and build a setup right under city officials' noses even if the former mayor was an ally.

Chris could only hope that Grace's personal guards' were just as tactful—and more _importantly—_ just as successful in their task as well.

And then he saw the first signs that they may indeed be too late.

Chris felt the first stab of pain strike the walls of his stomach when he saw drops of blood on the floor. The pain transformed into nausea and eventually numbness all together when they nearly stepped on the first dead body. Grace stooped down and scanned for a pulse, but Chris could tell by her reaction alone that the victim was long dead.

A half dozen Peacekeepers were found scattered across another corridor. Chris hypothesized that the men and women paid the most particular interest to the ones who were loyal to herself and the man she loved. When she finally rose to her feet after tending to the sixth fallen Peacekeeper he could see in her face that her hopes of finding Xavier and extracting him out of this place alive was fading.

His beloved brother hadn't given up on finding him when Louis Keaton held him so long ago.

He could at least return that determination.

He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

"Lead on, Grace." He said to her. "For better or worse, we need to find Xavier."

She lifted her long legs and did as she was asked, peeling a rifle off of one of the carcasses and continued taking the point. Blue had trailed them from the rear so far by a few yards, scanning everything in her site, saying little, and leaving _nothing to chance._ She was sweating."

The entered a small room after a few more minutes that fed into a far more grand setting of a courtyard. There were at least ten more bodies spiraled about it. It smelled of bruised blood, marrow, urine and gunfire.

They were deep into an abyss.

And there they found Xavier at last.

Blue holstered her gun and pushed her tied down hair out of her eyes to give herself something to do so she wouldn't focus on what she was seeing. Grace found a nearby wall without looking for it to support her weight as she struggled to hold herself up right any longer. Chris...Chris Prince didn't move for a very long time. He wanted to ease his frame over to where he saw a bloodied, dying Xavier sitting up with his back resting on an adjacent wall, stroking the equally blood nappy mane of a dead young man who looked to be no older than his step daughter when she died. The younger man looked very much like a child who had settled in for a long nap.

Special Agent Christopher Prince couldn't tell whether his brother's blood ended and the younger man's began. He glanced to his own left and recognized Warren Washington's frame, still athletic, even in death. Chris had trained with men and women who'd taken a great pride in piecing impossible crime scenes like this together like one would piece together a jigsaw puzzle.

The professional in him did not envy them this task.

But the Christopher Prince who had a personal stake in this rediscovered his resolve, and stepped over the final dead body that separated he and his dying brother and made his way over to him. Chris sat on his knees on the floor in front of him as close as he could.

"Xavier...it's alright, man." He examined two or three bullet holes pouring blood out of his chest and side. "It's...it's not that bad...really, we can fix this—"

"Liar," Xavier said. And then he smiled at Chris and the action broke the agent's heart all over again. "You should stick to the truth, big brother; it's what Dad always said you were best at. And he was right."

And even if time allowed me to, do I send you into eternity knowing the ugly truth about our father?

Instead, Chris squeezed both of his brother's forearms bruised by blood. He looked back only for a moment: He saw Tabitha Blue squatting over in a corner, protecting their perimeter against any attack and giving him a respectful moment to grieve. Grace Edwards had planted her face into her skinny hands and began to openly sob. The man she loved was dying and Chris was sure that she was wrongly blaming herself for her inability to protect him from Quincy Morgan's power play.

Chris sat all the way down in front of his brother.

"Who did this to you?" Chris asked through clenched teeth.

Xavier remained tight lipped, but when the tears started flowing ever so freely and his stroking of the boy's hair increase simultaneously it clued Chris in. Nevertheless he said, "I'll find Quincy. I'll make him pay for what he orchestrated here."

Xavier wiped at his tears and then glanced down at the boy. "We've already paid the price, Chris. My vengeance has been served. It's too late for anything else. I've already forgiven Quincy...I've forgiven Serena Tennyson as well—just as I hope my God can forgive me for all of my sins."

"I wanted to save you, Xavier." Chris said as his tears now came. He knew Grace's misery. He understood it all too well. "I wanted to save you the same way you rescued me when we were just boys."

Xavier stopped brushing the dead boy's hair and reached for the living. He wrapped his arms around his brother Chris and pulled him close.

"You still can save me, big brother," He said, his voice fading with every syllable. "I saw our father in a vision tonight, Chris. I don't understand everything that seeing him was supposed to mean...I know that if you can save his legacy, that the both of us will live one. Don't let his dreams die here. I want you to _promise me_ that you won't let them die when...I die."

"I promise."

Other than the sobbing of the two people closest to the one dying, there was only silence. Grace walked over, falls to her knees and wraps her slender figure around the both of them. Chris only listened as she told her brother that she loved him and regretted not telling him earlier. Xavier's voice had been reduced only to a whisper. Chris had wedged himself so close that he could _feel_ his brother's heart beating. It was louder than his voice was at this point. Blue was silent...still...so still in fact that Chris cannot recall ever seeing her so motionless before.

Xavier whispered to him to tell his boys that he loved them and that he hoped to see them again soon. Chris wasn't sure what that meant, but he nodded nonetheless.

And then with strength of voice that defied his condition, Xavier said, "Do you remember the track that was playing through the church's speakers being piped in even in the bathroom I met you in?"

Chris nodded slowly through his tears.

"I do."

"Do you remember what I said to you when I heard it?"

"You said that when you died, you wanted a song so beautiful playing for you."

Xavier smiled.

"Will you hum it for me, big brother?" Xavier asked. "Will you do this one last thing for me?"

Chris hummed the melody of the song as best as he could remember.

"Yes... _yes..._ that's it, Christopher. That's it exactly. It's called _A Death is in the air tonight._ I never thought that I would have done enough in this world to earn my own theme song. I never..."

And then Xavier Prince, the One, the most dangerous man in the world—all of _him_ died.

Special Agent Christopher Prince saw his own reflection as he glared into his brother's lifeless eyes one last time before he gently closes them with two fingers.

Grace cried audibly and Blue bit back her own tears with every fiber of her being.

Chris began humming his brother's theme song from the beginning.

Xavier had died without even saying goodbye to him.

He never could say goodbye.
Chapter Nineteen

First, hate blinds us to exercising common sense.

Secondly, hate causes you to seek out the wrong in the right and the right in the wrong.

Finally, hate is sustained directly as a consequence of ignorance and fear.

I fear it because of these three things that Blacks will always hate Whites and Whites will always hate Blacks.

_-Simon Woodward, author of_ Race and the 2000's
Roxanne

**Marta (nearing MLK Memorial), 25** th **Day**

She watched Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree awake from her slumber at last. The other woman rubbed at the corners of her big brown eyes, shook the cobwebs out and then turned her attention to what should have been a tremendous knot on the back of her head.

So this is the woman who Chris called his best friend?

The doctor noted Roxanne's presence and she could tell that the memories of what had transpired over the past few minutes and hours were pouring back into her. Angel went to stand, but Roxanne pulled her gun and the doctor slid back into the Marta's uncomfortable seat where Roxanne had directed her.

"Roxanne, listen, I'm only going to say this once so make sure you hear me," Angel said. "I don't have the time to do— _whatever_ in the hell it is you're hoping that we can do right now."

Roxanne waved the barrel of the gun at her again.

"Oh, you have more time...and _less_ time than you'll ever believe, Doctor. I've waited so many years for this moment right here. And I promise you that I won't be disappointed."

Angel cocked a brow. "This...all of this is about Marie isn't it?" She dared to mention Roxanne's dead sister's name and began to rise from her seat once more without permission."

"Sit down, Doctor. Please don't have me tell you that again."

Angel flashed her sad smile on her processed lips. Was there anything about this woman that wasn't fake or enhanced in some shape or form? "You blame me for what the FBI did to your sister."

Angel got to her feet over Roxanne's latest objections—just long enough to seat herself next to her—violating all pretenses of etiquette and space. The doctor then leaned on the gun's barrel causing the other woman to gasp for breath. Roxanne saw two or three Marta patrons glance over their shoulders, curious at what was going on in the farthest seat in the back of the car.

"Don't insult either one of our intelligences, Doctor." Roxanne held her gun steady, even with Angel brushing her side up against it repeatedly. "Don't deny your full involvement in the FBI's blatant murder of my sister."

"I can't speak to your version of past events, Roxanne." Angel pushed her hair out of her eyes. "I was just as in the dark about your sister's ambush as you were."

Roxanne could feel the Marta's brakes engage seconds before she heard the whine of them engaging, this car finally grinding to a halt. The doors a few feet from them slide open and three patrons escaped through the hatch while none replace their spots on the Marta. Roxanne knew the route well and waited until they were less than two minutes from the next stop before she surprised Angel by standing herself—with her gun raised for all to see.

" _Alright,"_ Roxanne announced aloud. "Unfortunately, through no fault of your own, you people have been involved in a private affair that is far from your concern. I would appreciate if the remainders of you exit the Marta at the next stop."

A couple of riders protest. One older gentleman laughed heartily, told Roxanne to kiss his ass and resumed to the act of reading his newspaper. Another man, who smelled like an old gym shoe, commented ever so slyly that this wasn't his stop.

When the Marta slowed to halt _no_ one moved.

Roxanne Sanchez fired a single shot into the ceiling.

"I said everyone out, _right now._ " She then sneered something in Spanish. "I won't ask nearly as nicely next time.

The passengers exited, some running, others stumbling over themselves to get away from the crazy woman with the gun. The man with the newspaper was the last to leave. He folded his paper neatly, grabbed his hat and cursed ever so quietly and leaped off a second before the doors closed once again, while the female automated voice announced the Marta's next stop.

Roxanne found and turned the lock that would allow no further passengers to enter this car. She then plopped into the seat that Angel had first vacated when she came to. She took a deep breath and got a full measure of the woman she'd wanted to confront for so very long.

I'll give you credit, if you are afraid, Doctor, you are doing a good job of masking your fear. Or maybe you are just as a cold hearted a bitch as I've always believed you to be.

"Roxanne, I don't understand why didn't you ever take the time to contact me?" Angel asked her. "We should have talked. We could have discussed this matter rationally instead of you allowing all these years to pass and the bitterness to grow. I can understand what your sister meant to you—"

" _Don't_ ," Roxanne spat out the word. "Don't you dare patronize me, Doctor. I won't have you treating me like one of your sheep. She waved the gun at Angel again in case the other forgot she possessed it. "And back up off of me. I'm not playing games with you. I intend for you to hear what I have to say, know my pain and then I'm going to kill you, Angel."

Angel latched her palms to the seat and used them to methodically slide her torso so that soon after she is nearly on top of Roxanne. Roxanne cocked her gun in a reactionary manner, but Angel only unleashes a sneer and gave her full contact.

" _Back off of me, Doctor,"_

"You're not very good at this are you, Roxanne. Allowing all of the other passengers to get off this thing was the worst possible mistake you could have made— _little girl_."

Roxanne pointed the gun in her face.

"You must have a death wish, lady?"

"Do you think that I am afraid to die? Do you, really?" Angel wrinkled her nose, but her big brown eyes went glossy. Roxanne imagined that the other woman, like herself, did not let tears flow freely very often. "I had one of those resting in my gums by my own hand earlier tonight. So if you think that you're so very tough and I'm shitting in my panties because you are pointing it at me now—"

"Make one more move towards me and I'll kill you, Angel. I swear that I will."

Angel lowered her head so that the barrel rested firmly against the backside of her skull. "Let me help you, dear. I wouldn't want you to miss. You have helped me miss my stop already. Probably my last chances in helping the FBI avert this Zero Hour deadline catastrophe from dropping on us all has passed. I have nothing to lose by you pulling that trigger. But I do want you to stop wasting our time. I don't want to hear you whine and bitch about your long lost sister. I want you to do what you say you will do. Put _both_ of us out of our misery by pulling that trigger right now."

" _Oh, my God_ ," Roxanne shoved Angel away from her and stood with her back against one of the Marta's sliding doors. "You're even crazier than your reputation says that you are."

"Maybe," Angel answered with a blank stare on her face. And then Angel surprised her yet again by letting the tears flow. After a moment of silence, the doctor said, "Yes, I quite think that I might be a little crazy, but I have enough professional experience in my field to recognize a cold hearted killer when I cross one, Roxanne. Your sister qualified as such. Marie excelled in soliciting innocent patrons, getting them into various compromising positions—and then killing them."

"They weren't innocent," Roxanne said. "Don't talk to me about innocent. Those men were pigs—all of them. They cheated on their wives and girlfriends with whores—just like my sister Marie. I'm sure their rendezvous with her weren't any of their first. How could you call these bastards innocent?"

Angel stood with her.

"True enough, those men had sinned." Angel nodded long and hard. "But the ultimate judgement belonged to a higher power. They didn't deserve to be murdered in cold blood and mutilated. She cut their throats when they least expected it, Roxanne. She sliced off their genitals and left their naked remains for the dogs and other scavengers to feast on."

"And what about the FBI's sins," Roxanne asked her. "Marie was guilty enough to be sure. She should have been brought to justice. She should have been tried by a jury of her peers, sentenced—and perhaps even given a sentence of death for what she'd done." Roxanne rubbed the sweat from her brow with the gun. "She didn't deserve to be cut down and carved up like some animal."

Angel nodded slowly again.

"I agree. She did not. I _know_ that she did not. And I wept for her. But I swear to you that the agents that I was working with never fully informed me on what their ultimate end game was for Marie. My job was to aid in finding your sister. Once that task was completed, I was tasked in convincing her to come in."

"I guess you did your job very well, Doctor." Roxanne said sardonically.

"And I guess you did yours as well."

" _Shut up_ ,"

"Well, you did, didn't you?" Angel asked her. "Maybe these entire episodes, this Marta ride from hell that takes us full circle is about _your_ role in that fiasco, not mine."

"I said, _shut up."_

Angle circled her.

"Maybe, _you_ killed her after all."

Roxanne fired a round—intentionally behind Angel that shattered the Plexiglas casing. She fired an identical warning shot on the opposite side of the car that netted the same result."

"I've told you before, Roxanne, don't waste time or shots—kill me if that's what you brought me here to do. Let's do the dance."

"Go to Hell, Angel."

" _Do it,"_

Roxanne pulled the trigger again...but her piece only clicked with the announcement of an empty chamber.

A teary eyed Angel said, "A part of me wishes that you would have saved a bullet. At least our little conversation—this girl talk would have accomplished something worthwhile."

Roxanne caught her breath.

"What in the hell are you babbling about now?"

"Like I said before, I missed my stop. Apparently you've been following me for some time. You were there when those women outside the Marta Station reacted the way they did towards me. Why do you think that I would risk showing my face anywhere near Downtown Atlanta right now unless I was trying to reach someone important."

Angel told Roxanne the short version about one of Atlanta's missing children showing up alive and reasonably well at his home. She also told her how the country seeing this child before the Zero Hour arrived could have aided in avoiding casualties that were surely to occur even in a limited racial standoff in the streets.

And then Angel punched Roxanne.

" _You've denied me my last chance to make this right."_ Angel spat out as she swung wildly again, Roxanne barely able to dodge a series of windmill rights and lefts. " _It's over now, Roxanne. Our country as we knew it is over."_

A few tired minutes later, Roxanne Sanchez couldn't recall how many more of the other woman's blows she'd fended off.

She also couldn't remember how many tumbles down the platform—and down the stairs they both made after the door opened when the Marta reached its latest stop.

She sure as hell couldn't remember when or where the throbbing pain of shattered bones in her ankle first struck her senses.

And finally, Roxanne Sanchez couldn't vividly recall the instance where she'd successfully stabbed Doctor Angel Hicks Dupree in her side with a knife.
Louis

**Stone Mountain, Eastern Zone, 25** th **Day**

It was finally _his_ time.

The man who had once been known as Louis Keaton unbuttoned his shirt in a slow and deliberate motion. Moses watched him with eyes as bright and large as flashlights. Hugh—that is what he thought of himself now—Hugh seemed to be only using the tips of his fingers, each stroke of movement calculated, and every tug on the shirt's fabric measured. He'd come a long way physically, mentally _and_ emotionally. Why would it be necessary to rush through this now?

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Serena's two guards she's left behind to watch him. _And we needed to be watched did we not?_

What? Who?

They watched each other conspicuously. They wanted no part in seeing what was sure to come next. Their reports and all the other official documentation they'd been presented reminded them that he was capable of such savagery. But who wanted to see a child violated—a child's innocence ripped away in an instant by a madman with a hard on.

They don't have to see anything of the sort. We could walk away from this. We still have time.

What? Who?

And yet, the guards looked on. Hugh knew that in part it was the call of duty. Serena had left them a task to complete and they played the good solider carrying out a mission.

And yet, they also looked on because it was partly human nature that allowed men not to look away from disaster and tragedy when it surfaced for all eyes to see.

The man who now knew himself as Hugh started to unbuckle his pants. The steel felt cold in his hands. He could smell his own funk building underneath his neck, in the walls of his armpits and especially around the black hole of his groin. He ran his tongue behind the lining of his teeth. He felt his pulse pounding in his ears.

He could hear the howl of insanity _and_ reason calling out to him in the back of his mind.

And in the front—

You are looking for an avenue of escape. We are giving it to you—take it—take it and be gone from this place. We release you.

Who? What?

How much longer would he be able to fend his natural instincts off? How much longer could he deny what he actually _was?_

Everything went cold now. Hugh began to shiver. It was the other...Louis who had always been so uptight, so insecure. Hugh always took what he wanted—consequences be damned.

Hugh was a study in power and stability.

And by God in Heaven—or the long damned ruler of the _other_ realm, Hugh wanted that feeling of ecstasy and fulfillment one last time.

He wanted it so very badly.

When Moses failed to move, paralyzed with fear, Hugh commanded Serena's men to bring the boy to him. They reluctantly obeyed.

Xavier Prince's stalling tactics—and that's all they really were—had proven to be folly. A House in Chains or the authorities would never find these children before the Zero Hour came and passed. Moses Jackson and the other boys were pawns in a game nearing its long completion.

And he had won the game.

And these boys would serve as his just reward for all of the self- control, discipline and obedience that he's exhibited over the past days, weeks and months.

They were his to do with as he had pleased.

"Take your clothes off," Hugh had offered as if it were truly a suggestion. "You should take them off for me. Let me see you. Let me see _all_ of you."

The first of what Hugh suspected would be many tears dropped from the boy's eyes. "No, please don't hurt me." He shook his head violently. "You promised that you wouldn't harm me if I did everything you asked. I watched over the other boys. I didn't let anything happen to them like I said that I would." Moses let out a wail. "You _promised."_

"I want you out of those clothes right now."

"But—"

" _Now,"_

Hugh could see one of the guard's Adam's apple moving and he swallowed audibly. The second man looked as if he wished he were anywhere in the world but here. He even dared to part his lips as if anyone had asked his opinion of this situation.

"You gentleman may excuse yourselves." Louis dropped his pants for effect. "Young Moses and I have our business to attend to. And he is but the first."

They looked from one to another, back to Hugh, to Moses and repeated the cycle once again.

"Respectfully, sir, Mistress Serena left strict orders not to allow you out of our sites again." One of the two managed to say.

"Her reasoning is completely understandable considering the fact that the children nearly were lost—and more importantly I was under the control of a far less stable influence in the guise of Louis Keaton." He finally removed his shirt as well. "But as I'm sure you two gentleman can attest, I, _Hugh_ Keaton am in total control of both mind and body."

They still failed to leave him in peace.

"Alright, okay, why don't you two hang around then? I do enjoy a little child porn myself from time to time. It does get the heart pumping. Well, it _does_ start with the heart..."

And the man known as Hugh Keaton removed his boxers as well.

The second guard swallowed hard again.

"It's...it's not like...it's not like that at all, sir."

Hugh whipped behind Moses with cat like quickness and he licked the length of Moses Jackson's neck from hairline to the top of his spine, never taking his ocean blue eyes off of the two guards while he enjoyed the boy's taste.

Moses released another wail of anguish and disgust.

The first guard gulped one final time...and nearly trampled his partner with his hastened retreat out of the room. The second one looked as if his knees could buckle at any moment and joined the other man on the other side of the door.

"We'll be right outside the door, sir, if you need anything at all."

"Thank you."

Moses shook himself free of Hugh's grip—at least momentarily. He scattered to the other side of the room, scraping his knees in the process. He was breathing heavily by now, his already large eyes, stretched to their limits with terror. Hugh tries to calm him in vain.

Both man and child looked to see that Hugh's manhood has extended into a fine erection.

We won't do this, Hugh.

Who? What?

We won't.

Who? What?

Who or what was the voice that was so very loud in his head?

Hugh covered his ears in an empty attempt to chase the voice away but nothing seemed to work. In fact, the other's tone seemed to have grown louder.

_We're okay, for now, Hugh._ The voice inside of him said; a voice far too familiar for his liking. A voice that he'd hoped that he would never to hear again.

We take care of our own.

We are here for us, Hugh.

_We won't let anyone hurt us...we won't let anyone_ use _us again._

And we will kill anyone who tries.

_And_ I _do mean anyone._

And after a moment and many tears, he stooped down to the floor and gathered his clothes—and put them back on his body.

He then tossed Moses Jackson his shirt back to him as well.

"You'll need this."

But Moses could only aimlessly watch as his shirt fell back to the floor. He was still paralyzed with fear and couldn't allow himself to move.

"Most...most of what you've witnessed from my behavior over the past few minutes was an act for the guards." It was the only way to explain it in a quick and precise way to a child who had no earthly idea how to understand it any other way. He inched closer. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Moses wasn't buying his explanation and refused to move from his spot.

Louis...yes, for better or for worse, the boy who had watched his home and parents burn at Hugh's hand, the Louis persona had returned to him for good.

Louis ran his hand through his thinning hair. The stress was building. Time was short.

His own personal Zero Hour was here.

"Moses, listen" He offered the child his hand. "Please, I need us to get the other boys and get going. I'm okay now. I'm not going to hurt you. I kept my promise to you."

Moses cried out as Louis approached him.

" _Listen,"_

Louis heard the two guards back further away from the door. He guessed they were well out of earshot now.

" _Pay attention to me, solider_." Louis said in a gruff voice. "Do I need to remind you that you took an oath to these other boys in here? You gave your word that when the moment arrived, that I could depend on you that you would be there for them. That moment is upon us. I need you to move your feet. I need you to march yourself out of this room and this place right now. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Jackson?"

Moses's feet seemed to unscramble themselves and unlock from being embedded into the floor. He wiped his red eyes and runny nose with the back of his sleeve.

"Yes, I do, sir. I understand. What would you have me do?"

"Gather up the troops on my command. We are leaving this theatre of operations immediately."

"I...I like the sound of that, sir." Moses said but then the flashlights returned. "But how are we to do that sir? How do we get past Serena's guards?"

Louis only glared at the child with those brilliant blue eyes of his—and flashed him the most wicked smile that he could manage.

"How else," Louis asked gently. "We are leaving through the front door like any other guest would."

Moses nearly grinned.

"Yes, sir." He said. Right away, sir."

"Would you mind if I asked you something kind of personal first?"

Moses took an involuntarily step backwards, but eventually straightened his stance once again. In this case his curiosity conquered any fear that might have been feeling.

"What?"

"When is the last time that you had a bite to eat?"

Moses raised his eyebrows, the merits of the question lost on his adolescent mind.

Five minutes later the twin guards burst into the room when they heard Louis fake the loudest scream that he could muster. Undressed again, he is squatted over by the door as if Moses had bitten down of him in an unforgiving spot. When one of the guards reached to tend to his injuries Louis grabbed his sidearm and shot him in the face.

In the split second that the other guard's mind has to comprehend and process what he originally thought he witnessed, Louis snatched his partner's gun and fired a single shot between the man's eyes just as he reached for his own weapon.

Louis could hear the other children screaming from their secured location in the compound a few feet from here. Moses lowered himself into a squatted position in the far corner of this room. He was still covering his ears from the explosion of gunfire.

He mutely asks him to be still until he returns.

He knew that there is but one guard that remained.

He could hear him charging from the outside. If Louis understood anything about Pandora procedures and protocols, this man had already radioed for backup.

Louis had used a weapon like this today and even before, but lacked the hours of training and competence to outwit his adversary now that his element of surprise was now gone. He knew that he may only get a single opportunity to kill this last remaining man or _all_ was lost.

He did understand that with all of that training and experience the other man had, that there was at least a slim chance that he could be _over_ confident and even arrogant when he finally faced Louis. In the other man's mind there was no way in hell that a freak like Louis Keaton could have single handily taken out two of his Pandora comrades.

But Louis knew he couldn't fail.

If he were to fall...if his enemy found and killed him...Louis knew that shortly thereafter Serena would order these children slaughtered—just as the Caretaker had done all of those years ago.

Louis couldn't afford to fail.

And he did not.

Just as the man bent the last corner to this room, Louis planted a bullet in the man's temple. He unloaded more rounds in his chest; torso and thigh for good measure even after the solider had fallen on his back.

Louis turned away from the carnage of his creation and his weaponless left hand out to Moses Jackson.

And the boy reluctantly took his hand in return.

They found the other boys crying and huddled together nearby.

"It's okay," Louis said to them. "It's alright now. Everything is going to be fine."

The boys look from Moses to Louis and back again. None of them take a move forward even after Louis used one of the dead guard's keys to unlock the bars that head them caged in like some type of animals. The Zero Hour has passed for him _and_ the city but the clock on a new deadline was ticking. He could guess that at least a dozen vehicles and at least a chopper or two had been dispatched to this location—even in the unlikely event, that a freak like him had overcome three experienced and well-armed agents.

"I know that all of you are afraid. And frankly, so am I. I've done some terrible things tonight." He looked back at the men he'd massacred to the weapon warm in his hand. "And I've done far worse without even a gun in my hand in my past. I know that I've given you boys no reason to like me and very little reason to trust me. But I need you all to put your personal feelings aside for now—"

Some of the boys cried out louder.

"Please, stop it." Louis heard the pleading tone in his voice take center stage. "Pandora will be sending someone here soon to hurt us. I need you all to follow me out of here."

All of his gestures of goodwill seem to be laid to waste. None of the other boys looked to be making any strides towards leaving this place. Louis fell to his knees in frustration. He was ever so close to making this right.

And could he hear the _other's_ voice beginning to whisper in the back of his mind.

He could feel all of the training that Dr. Hicks Dupree was melting away.

Perhaps he hadn't vanquished Hugh like he so wanted to believe so easily?

Perhaps he was destined—

He heard Moses bark out a command.

The crying stopped.

"I said: _on your feet, solders."_

The other boys looked at Moses as if he is even more crazed than the only adult still left alive in this room...but they slowly began to rise to their feet. Chills raced through Louis shoulder blades.

In a strange way he can understand the pride a father feels for his own son's accomplishments as he watches his boy mature into a man.

"This man kidnapped us from our homes and families." Moses said. He looked different somehow to Louis, he looked older, especially the skin around his eyes and mouth. He was Moses from the old Bible stories. He was going to lead his people out of Egypt. He _was_ the general that Christopher Prince had been. He was that special child that everyone in his life knew that he could be. Moses Jackson was the hero that Louis Keaton could never be. "This man put us in considerable danger. He almost did something unspeakable to us. But I am not asking you to trust him. I _am_ begging you to trust _me_ while I follow him out of this place. Let's saddle up, gentlemen. We are going home."
Thomas

**Radisson Inn, Downtown, 26** th **Day**

It has been often said that fortune favored the bold.

So which way would the scales of justice weigh for an audacious act of betrayal?

For the third time in many minutes Thomas Pepper picked up Lucy Burgess' hotel key and examined it with a keen interest.

He spun the key around his thick fingers. He tossed it in the air and then rolled it around and through his fingers again. _Are you safe Lucy? Have the Peacekeepers left you in peace...or in pieces?_

Thomas dialed nine from the bed of his own hotel room's phone here at the Radisson Inn and keyed in the appropriate numbers of her cell phone that had burned in his memory by now.

Again she'd failed to answer.

He'd left her yet _another_ message on her answering service. He then got to his feet, his footsteps heavy in his own ears and scooped up his cell phone. He texted her again—but this latest message of _are you there,_ would simply exist in line with the dozen or so text that he'd previously sent.

Thomas Pepper knew that she never was far away from her cell. Even if she had taken on a lover for the evening—which was a distinct possibility—she would check her phone between sessions.

She would want to be on top of current events especially with the evening growing late and the Zero Hour fast approaching.

A scratchy but familiar voice on the television uttered something that had finally broken his concentration. Tammy Fields, a woman reporter from local Channel Six was interviewing common, everyday citizens about the impending passing of A House in Chain's self-imposed deadline for Atlanta's missing children to be found by the FBI. Most of the interviewees acted with nervousness if not outright anxiety about would happen in the city over the next few hours. Tammy smiled an honest, but futile assurance at a couple of them. Thomas noted that one of his former lovers had grown a small mustache on her upper lip and tried to mask the defect with too much red lip lipstick.

Thomas turned away and walked to his room's oversized window and peeked out at Midtown from his 8th floor vantage point. He compared this unease that Atlanta's citizens were feeling to a city that was lined up in the direct path of a major hurricane. You did what you had to in the attempt to protect what was yours. You bordered up the windows of your home. You moved yard furniture that the heavy gust of wind would use as projectiles inside. You checked on your neighbors.

And then you grabbed everyone you loved and got the hell out of the hurricane's path while there was still time.

Tammy had found more residents to speak on the air. One or two spoke to the camera in far angrier terms. One black woman who wore ponytails blamed the Rooster and his arrogance for the impending confrontation. Thomas was unsure how her blatant cursing got through the time delay but it had. A frame or two later the camera showed a couple of skinheads showing off sawed off shotguns on live television. They _whooped_ and hurled obscenities and racial slurs at any person of color they could find and fired off several rounds into the air.

For a moment, Channel Six went black.

When it returned four men who'd taken the mark were standing next to Tammy. She looked uncomfortable...if not a little scared in their wake. They vowed to honor Xavier Prince's instructions not to act until the Zero Hour officially passed. And then the largest of the men leaned into the microphone and wished the viewers a good night and blew a kiss at the camera.

Channel Six went to another feed to show a far more panoramic view of Atlanta. Parts of the city were a blur of activity while other neighborhoods looked abandoned altogether. Independent school bus companies were offering charter service to people of color who were desperate to flee—to what most authorities believed—were safer areas of the metropolis in the suburbs. History had taught the country that what was perceived at predominantly Black neighborhoods would take the heaviest brunt of the coming act of civil disobedience as they did in Los Angeles during the Rodney King Riots and the assassination of the country's first Black president.

Thomas turned the station with the remote looking for a narrative with a more national perspective to it. He found one within a few clicks. Reports and video coming in from Harlem to Washington, DC to New Orleans to Chicago to Los Angeles and countless other municipalities mirrored one another.

America was sitting on a time bomb of racial discord that the world had never witnessed.

And that bomb was set to go off in two hours.

The talking heads were having a field day. They'd hyper analyzed all of the events of the past few weeks—and of American history itself—that had let us to the brink...of _this._ One man, who was the color of vanilla ice cream, argued that this day had been inevitable since Lincoln had freed the slaves. A woman wearing a black blazer over a dark colored blouse—which only made her appear larger—offered a comment that each generation had its signature point of racial unrest and that this was our time. And yet, another man wearing wrinkled khakis pleaded for cooler heads to prevail in what he repeatedly referred to as a fiasco. He demanded that Serena Tennyson and Xavier Prince pull their people back from this impending catastrophe. And before Thomas switched the TV off he saw one last woman whose odd figure proved that God indeed has a sense of humor, ask the question that he himself wanted to know: What would become of the missing boys when this conflict began in earnest?

He paced the floor pondering that question for a very long time.

He sat down. He got to his feet again. He peered over his shoulder at the clock resting on the nightstand. He compared the time to the one that he had synced to his laptop and his cell phone.

There were only five minutes remaining until the Zero Hour.

He ignored the remote to the TV and raced back to the hotel's window for another look. It became painfully obvious early on that dozens of people had obviously not waited for the deadline to pass to make their hostile mark. In the distance, probably about two miles away, he could see groups of people wielding baseball bats involved in a confrontation.

He looked in another direction and saw National Guard troops putting their people in place. Several helicopters filled the skyline with their presence.

With nervous hands Thomas fumbled with his cell. It took him a minute or so to control the shaking and finally governing control of his thick fingers again. He dialed Lucy Burgess once more, but and automated feminine voice informed him that all circuits were busy. He fumed. He tried her number again a second...and then a third time...netting the same results each time.

He resumed his frantic pacing.

He steadied his hand long enough to use the remote to bring the TV back to life choosing to concentrate on local coverage of events. Tammy and her camera crew were struggling to continue their duties. She did announce that a heavy estimate of casualty reports from across the city was _already_ coming in.

_The pundits_ , he thought, _had been wrong after all._

Atlanta was a city that had found the time to hate.

On the national feed the talking heads had gone eerily silent as video feeds from across the nation had uttered its violent message all too well. The funny shaped woman finally broke the silence and asked a question that Thomas Pepper was sure to take to his grave:

She asked the panel and all the viewers who watched tonight where was _he_ at this evening? What was _he_ doing? She said that he had been proven a prophet after all? She reminded the world that he'd seen the inevitable clash between Pandora and a House in Chains on the horizon for many years.

She also reminded him of something that he himself had forgotten that he now remembered uttering a single time five years ago on his vlog when he was feeling particularly dramatic:

A conflict between the two social powers could quickly escalate and get out control easily...and lead this country into a second Civil War.

Unable to idly stay in this room one second more, Thomas Pepper finally stepped towards the door. Atlanta's missing children hadn't been found. The extension that he had bargained with Xavier Prince in exchange for the whereabouts of Lucy Burgess had been for nothing. Now, the thought of the price that she might have payed—might still be paying was consuming him. In a few steps he had reached the elevator, but it had a sign displayed in front of the entrance saying that it was out of service.

Damn.

He was winded by the time he trudged down the eight flights of stairs. He stopped and bent over to catch his breath and to garner his thoughts to come up with some type... _any_ type of makeshift game plan. Lucy's hotel room couldn't be farther than two miles from where he was standing here gasping for breath right now. He made his way to the parking area where he could see his Jaguar sitting on the third aisle. He fumbled for his keys as he reached the car... _and saw something that was beyond belief:_ He had a flat tire.

_Oh no, oh no, not now. I can't believe that this is happening_ now.

He rolled Lucy's hotel key card around his fingers again and again. He could change the tire, of course. _But how much time will I loose in the mean time?_ He spun the key card around his finger one last time and secured it in his pocket. His mind was made up. He could reach her on foot. He could _do_ this. He leaned back and inhaled deeply—and then Thomas Pepper did something before he set off that he couldn't remember doing in years:

He prayed.

Four blocks away he saw his first act of violence as three white men drug another man of Latino descent into an alley and began pounding him to a pulp. He could only venture a guess as to what had gone on between the two parties before his arrival on the scene. This wasn't his business. His only business right now was getting himself to where Lucy Burgess was. Getting himself involved in this or any other fracas along the way hampered his chances of doing that in one piece.

Thomas Pepper was done trying to be the voice of reason in a chorus of others singing madness.

And then he jumped when he heard a woman screaming.

And then he heard round after round of gunfire that sounded as if it were close by.

Thomas Pepper lowered his head as much as his large frame would allow and got his feet moving.

Around the next corner he saw dozens of youthful black men breaking into rows of downtown shops, robbing each of the buildings of everything that a man could carry. One of the store owners, who looked to be an Asian descent wrestled with one of the thieves over his merchandise—only to be expectantly be shot in the be shot in the head by another gun carrying robber.

It didn't take keen intellect to predict that the worse elements of society would feast on the rest of us, especially during the initial moments after the Zero Hour passed. Regardless of race or color, these heathens and lowlifes were little else but opportunist. There would never be a better time for them to exploit the anarchy in the streets and an undermanned police force to their personal gain.

Thomas was so very tired carrying around all of his extra bulk. He hadn't needed to run like this on any continuous basis since his college days when he boxed. And the windy smoky conditions around him weren't aiding his cause either. He honestly didn't know if he had enough energy stored in his reserves to venture another three or four blocks to reach Lucy.

To his immediate left Thomas saw a middle aged woman of Indian descent fall to her knees as gang of teenaged white boys descended on her clothing store. She begged them to leave her and her possessions in peace. She told them that her husband had died a year ago and this store was _all_ she had left of him in this world. Thomas tried to look away but as he glanced back he saw the woman grab one of the boy's hands...and _kiss_ his knuckles. She told them that she knew that they were good boys—all of them—and she knew that grant her wish and leave her be.

The boy squeezed her hand with enough force to cause the woman to wince. One of his buddies moved past them both and wielded two handfuls of cash in a blink of an eye when he returned. Three others took their turns inside each exiting the store with hundreds of dollars of stolen merchandise.

And then the leader, who had been locked in physical contact with the store's owner, back slapped her with that same hand...

...and then he pulled his pistol out as if to finish her off—

And by all that is and _was_ holy, Thomas Pepper had seen enough.

" _Stop this now,"_ Thomas yelled at them before he had realized what he had done.

The one with the gun fired a shot just past Thomas' ear as a single warning shot for him to mind his own goddamn business.

Thomas cursed back at him.

The boy trained his pistol on him. Thomas thought that he surely was a dead man—and a damned stupid one at that.

But just as quickly the boy begin to _smile..._ he put the pistol away for now and instructed his boys to cause him to suffer a wee bit before they made the final kill.

And so they began to chase after him instead.

And yet, despite Thomas' advanced age and weight, he had a decent head start and rounded the next corner, but was already beginning to breathe heavily.

They were already gaining.

Well, at least the store owner would be able to escape while they are chasing me.

He could go to his grave knowing that he at least saved someone's life tonight, even if he had failed to save Lucy—and himself in the process.

After he cleared a jewelry store that was being ransacked with the gang closing the distance ever rapidly he knew he was down to two very difficult options: He could take his chances and run out into the open street and risk the boys tiring of the chase and giving it up or them firing their guns at him.

Or he could hope...he could pray by God and Jesus that they had a thread of decency in their bones and wouldn't follow him into a cathedral that was just close enough for him to use his very last ounce of strength and courage to reach.

And he had to make his decision right now.

Thomas Pepper ran for his life towards the church.

He could nearly feel a couple of errand shots that whizzed by him, striking two other pedestrians who were running from the heist at the jewelry store.

Thankfully, the huge French doors slid open without issue and Thomas dove inside the entrance, slowed his momentum in an instant and slammed the door and bolted it behind him.

He slid down to his knees in total exhaustion.

He listened...he waited for either their gunshots piercing or themselves trying to break the door down in an attempt to reach him and finish what he had started.

But either instance ever came.

After another minute, Thomas composed himself long enough to turn around...

And he saw hundreds of people who only had eyes for him.

Perhaps out of reflex, perhaps in part because of respect for a House of God, Thomas staggered to his feet.

He felt as if he made personal eye contact with each and every one of those hundred or so people.

They were _all_ people of color. They were of all ages and sizes. Children were crying. He could see a young mother holding her infant to her breast. Families were huddling together. Some of the elderly looked at him with an air of sourness in their gaze. He even heard two or three people openly curse at him even though they were in this holy house. Another questioned why in the hell would _he_ seek shelter here?

One balding man whose body had once been a temple but no more stepped out of the mob and asked in a gentle but firm voice for all to remain calm; He said that everything would be alright. He told them that the God he knew never had made a mistake.

The man's tone and inflection reminded Thomas so much of his old friend and Editor Bernard Lott. _And where are you...and how are you right now, my old friend?_ Thomas could imagine the man's sermons booming over his congregation on Sundays.

Thomas slumped down into one of the bench seats that separated him from everyone else who was inside of the church. He was exhausted. He was spent. He looked behind at the French doors one last time and decided that his pursuers had truly given up the chase. He mouthed a word of thanks to the heavens for that when yet another thought caused him to shudder in his short sleeves: He had truly put every man, woman and child in this Cathedral in danger if that gang had decided that he was worth killing no matter the cost.

The minister of the church, at least that's what Thomas had deciphered from the man's clothing and leadership, cast a rather large shadow on him when he finally stood next to him. Thomas stole one final lungful of air and prepared himself to return from the way he came if and when this man asked him to leave his flock.

And his banishment would be poetic justice. Outside of a friend's wedding here and there Thomas hadn't stepped foot inside of a church since his father's funeral. He shouldn't be here...but he should. He _needed_ to be here, especially now.

Several others joined those who voiced opposition to his presence. Before long those who wanted his vanquished became loud and nearly unruly.

The minister laid one giant hand on Thomas' shoulder—and raised the other high so that all who were inside would see it.

" _This is the house of our lord_." He said in that same booming voice that Thomas had found intimidating, that Thomas had found so very comforting. He then turned away from those who had come for God's protection through him and turned all of his attention to the _one_ who had done the same. "Let your heart not be troubled, son. Everyone here had come for forgiveness, for comfort and for protection during this trying time. The truth teller is not beyond our God's love. He is covered by the blood as well. "

And then the minister embraced Thomas Pepper with every ounce of strength that he had in him. After the larger man released Thomas, he gave him his full measure.

"I hope that you may find some comfort here, my son; may you find comfort here."

Thomas Pepper found the comfort that he sought.

And then he found tears.
Seth

**Fulton County-Cobb County Border, 26** th **Day**

Atlanta was a hell on Earth and ciaos was the devil that reigned supreme over it.

Dr. Seth Dupree watched partly in horror, partly in awe as his "comrades" in a House in Chains methodically rounded up more of they termed as "Roosters" and executed them in viciously efficient ways over the past few hours.

Their travels had taken them to the borders of Cobb and Gwinnett counties and back to the home turf in Fulton again. The Zero Hour had long past now. But Seth would never forget what Quincy Morgan and his Peacekeepers did when the Midnight Hour had arrived: The men and women halted the convoy's trek through the street and avenues and roads long enough to kill the engines, climb to the rooftops of each car or SUV and fire semi-automatic weapon fire into the already smoky air.

And then Quincy Morgan said at the top of his voice, "Brothers and sisters, what do you see when you visualize our people's future?"

Seth heard the other's reply in a mediocre attempt at voices trying to sound off as one.

"We see days filled with misery and pain."

He remembered them breaking into a Victorian styled house when they had crossed into Cobb County an hour ago. The initial, independent phase of his operation was completed and he had admitted as much to Seth. The Gray Man had somehow somewhere along the way morphed into what amounted to the role of an embedded reporter traveling with the troops witnessed the war on the ground as it happened.

And now he the doctor/journalist could report that his units were picking homes at random. Number Four, the man Seth thought Quincy refer to as Percy—at least once respectfully reminded their field leader that they needed to wrap this up and return to the Fulton County Theatre of Operations sooner than later.

Percy said something about _Scar_ being enacted; and soon.

Quincy acknowledged with a silent but meaningful nod. He told the slightly darker skinned man with the clean shaven head that he had one last household on his hit list before they turned back. Percy winced a little...but reluctantly agreed. Again, he reminded his leader of their limited time available to get it done.

When the Peacekeepers charged inside the residence they found five white adults sitting in the living area.

_Thankfully,_ Seth thought to himself, _at least there are no children here._

Seth said for the fourth time in as many trips.

"Stop this madness now, Quincy. Order your Peacekeepers to leave this place and leave this people in peace. You don't _have_ to do this."

But Quincy Morgan had chosen to ignore him as he the other three times.

Three of the people present were women and they started to scream as if they had been cued to while one of the two men shouted racial insults and profanities at the invaders. The other man saved his small talk for another time, grabbed a loaded shotgun but Percy proved too fast and equally efficient when he blew a large whole in the homeowner's temple.

Just as in the other incursions, the raid didn't last overtly long.

A handful of very large unnamed Peacekeepers drug the survivors unceremoniously into the middle of the street kicking and screaming. One of the snipers who had been guarding their perimeter from the far corner picked off an old man who was loaded for bear off of his rooftop. Seth saw four more neighbors take to cover behind cars and trees taking shots at the Peacekeepers. Seth ducked for cover. A female Peacekeeper who had been with them since the beginning went down first with a gunshot to her neck. She was bleeding profusely and by the time Seth got to her side she had drowned in her own blood.

Percy cursed aloud. Quincy Morgan barked out commands with his last one leaving no room for misinterpretation from those who had chosen to follow his path: _We will stand or fall, but we will_ not _let these prizes escape our judgement._

And then Quincy fired two quick shots and killed two men defending their neighbors as best they could. Two Peacekeepers caught the third white man in crossfire and their combatant's torso exploded in a spectrum of blood and bones. And Percy finished tonight's latest skirmish by capping the final man in the kneecap as failed to find adequate cover in time. The man's gun fell out his immediate reach. Desperate and dying he tried to crawl to where the weapon was resting but Percy easily beat him to it. Percy stomped on his back and fired a single round into the base of the fallen man's skull.

Percy cursed aloud again soon after his shot was through echoing down the street. He pointed at the dead female Peacekeeper and screamed at Quincy that they should vacate the area _now._ He said that they didn't need to lose any more people to these aimless attacks. Scar was on the horizon. There was still much work to do.

Quincy was unshaken and unmoved. He commanded his troops to bring the four people from the Victorian house to where he was again standing in the middle of the street.

Seth heard himself inhale.

And then he heard Quincy Morgan as he said to the first of the two women who had been shoved down near his loafers. "Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions your ancestors have perpetrated against people of color?"

"What?" She said between wails of agony at the direness of her situation.

Quincy Morgan stooped down so that she could hear his words better—and put his gun to her temple.

"Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions your ancestors have perpetrated against people of color?"

" _My ancestors,"_ She sounded baffled. "What do my ancestors have to do with who I am? I've done nothing to you people—"

Quincy pulled the trigger killing her instantly.

A teary eyed Peacekeeper couldn't strike his gaze from his fallen comrade. Seth recognized the look in his eye even though most of his face was covered by a mask. He must have loved the girl the way that Seth had loved his wife. He rudely threw the first man down to where Quincy stood tall and athletic once again.

"Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions by your ancestors have perpetrated against people of color?"

The little man slowly looked up and Quincy a look as cold as ice...a look as hot as fire.

And then he spit in the face of the man who was standing in judgement over him.

Quincy snarled, grabbed the man, spun him around and placed two shot in separate sections of the other man's spine. Seth heard parts of the man's vertebra shatter, even over his screams of horrid agony. Blood gushed out...but the Gray Man's long surgical background reminded him that this man would die—but not for hours to come.

Quincy wore a tight smile on his twitching lip, but his eyes are stretched to a vexing level of size and intensity. He knew all too well the damning end that he has brought to this man's life.

And Quincy looked oblivious to the spit dangling from his chin as he does not wipe it away.

The final man had seated himself in Quincy's shadow.

After a moment, The Sargent at arms found his focus and his voice again. He is unable to finish as the man launched into an unintelligible monologue of cries and begging. He grasped for Quincy's lower pants and kissed his loafers.

"I'm sure women of color did exactly as you are doing right now when your brood sold her husband or her children while she was powerless." He said his voice nearly a whisper. "It would have been a mercy for her master to kill her then."

Quincy placed his gun between the man's eyes—and blew a gaping hole between them.

"Who would deny that I have not been merciful tonight?"

At the last, it took two beefy Peacekeepers to drag the last victim forward. She was kicking and screaming and crying. The snipers checked the perimeter one last time to make sure the group would not come under a counter or new offensive while they finished up here.

" _Silence,"_ Quincy commanded her as if she were one of his.

She quieted as best as her trembling lip and sniveling would allow her.

"Do you seek forgiveness for the indiscretions that your people have perpetrated against people of color?"

" _Oh yes,"_ The woman put her hands up defensively. " _Oh, God, yes, I seek your forgiveness. Please forgive me. Please don't kill me."_

And then Quincy Morgan smiled.

He ejected the gun's magazine clip and tossed it and then the gun in the street.

He took less than a handful of steps towards Seth.

"You see, Doctor," He said as a matter of fact. "Not only am I merciful, I am reasonable as well. This woman has given me what I want."

"And by doing so, you will let her live?" Seth wanted to know.

"She is worthy of survival."

And then Quincy Morgan backhanded the large woman with all of his power and strength.

He stomped on her stomach and side again and again until The Gray Man could take it no longer—"

Seth dove at Quincy's waist. Quincy threw him off as if was a light as a feather. The two Peacekeepers who were closest to where the activity was began stomping and kicking the doctor in his ribs side and chest—

" _Enough,"_

Dr. Seth Dupree curled up like an embryo, the pain in his ribs and side nearly unbearable as he spat up blood. And yet, he found his final bit of strength and courage to...he grasped at one of Peacekeeper whose boots had assaulted him so duly just seconds ago.

He raised his face up to feel the dirt of the man's boot on his face with force.

" _No_ ," Seth spat out. "Don't tell them to stop now, Quincy. Command them to kill me the way that you've killed all the others. _I demand that you kill me right now before you force me to endure one more minute of this nightmare."_

Quincy looked to be a study in tranquility.

And then he extended his hand as if to aid him to his feet once again.

Seth looked at the other man wearily.

Is this another of your ruses, Quincy? What fate awaits me when I stand at your side?

Quincy pulled him to his feet as if he weighed no more than a rag doll.

"This," Quincy addressed with the same guarded respect that he had exhibited when Seth first came to and found himself in the company of the Peacekeepers earlier this evening.

In what seemed a lifetime ago.

"Doctor, your people have been systemically killing innocent black men and women since the day you stole my people from our lands in Mother Africa."

"I don't need a history lesson, especially from you, Quincy."

Quincy laughed. He looked around and couple of Peacekeepers let out a nervous grin.

"Look how the good doctor speaks to me. He knows that I have the power to kill him for it."

Seth purposely relaxed his tone.

"What I am saying is this: Let's say that every word you've spoken tonight is correct. You have influence. You have the Peacekeepers. Yet, you won't be able to match soul for soul, life for life."

"You're right, Doctor. Ultimately this is a hopeless exercise. History has shown us that minorities can never hope to rise up and overthrow the rule of a superior majority."

Seth frowned; he was truly at a lost.

"Then educate me, Quincy, what _is_ all of this murder and mutilation really about?" Seth pointed at the large woman who was still rolling on the pavement, trying to recover from her near death experience. "You orchestrated the execution of the leader of your House, Xavier Prince in cold blood. You told him that he was a leader for peace times only. This was now a time of war. What did you mean that?"

Percy looked away, ashamed of his role in Xavier's betrayal. The Peacekeepers look on as if Quincy's answer would interest them as well. Even the beaten down white woman lifts her head in anticipation of this man's response.

"When I was a little boy I was raised by my maternal grandmother. My own mother left for work one day when I was two and never returned." Quincy looked away, the memory stabbing at a tender area of his heart. "Anyway, I remember the day that she set of those Gansu knives she had ordered had finally arrived. To this day, I don't know, I don't fully understand why those knives fascinated me."

Seth felt his own face soften.

If Quincy was about to spring another trap then he had been hook line and sinker.

"I know the ones you are speaking of. I remember the infomercials that ran endlessly about them."

Quincy nodded.

"She warned me to stay away from them. She told me to let them be."

"But you didn't heed her advice did you," Seth added to the other's monologue. "How bad did you cut yourself?"

Quincy lifted his left arm up so Seth could view an old gash that was nearly four inches long and at least an inch deep.

It was a very deep scar.

"The knife was so sharp that I barely felt it. It was only a tingle of pain when it happened. All the blood scared my grandmother real bad though."

Seth nodded—and laughed nervously in spite of himself.

"It was a very deep scar." The Gray Man muttered.

Quincy pointed a long index finger at him as if the doctor had hit on a very important point.

"Yes, that is it exactly, Doctor. And even to this day, to this very moment, I'm cautious around knives. I am an efficient killer. I can kill you with a gun; I can end your life with my bare hands. But I never let a knife do my killing, even considering all of my professional experience; even considering all of the people that I have had to kill." He took a deep smoky breath and glared up at the stars. "That scar is always there to remind me of that. It is there to remind me of everything that I have lost...of all that I could still loose."

Seth nodded slowly and then shook his head.

"I want to understand, Quincy. I do. You don't think you can win this conflict with Pandora." Seth nodded once more. "All of this—all of what is _coming_ is your attempt to...you are going to leave your own _scar_ for the world to see. What has a House in Chains done, Quincy? What are your people going to do?"

The other man stole one last peaceful, silent breath. He smoothed out his bloody shirt and straightened out his pants.

And then he turned his full attention to the area just south of their position right now, back into the suburbs of Fulton County.

"A House in Chains has spent a considerable amount of time and capital hacking into the local telephone assistance database." He looked at his watch. "Twenty minutes ago thousands of bogus 911 calls were remotely being dialed out to the Atlanta Police Department. As scattered as the cops are surely to be now after the Zero Hour, we're counting on them to respond quickly to any and all calls originating from predominantly white neighborhoods."

"What kind of emergencies are these calls—"

"They're reporting the standard emergencies that would arise during an event like a great civil unrest rising out of the streets of a major American metropolitan city."

"And what happens when the police respond to these bogus calls?"

"Our snipers, like the ones you've seen in action here tonight, will feast upon them. It will be like target practice."

"Tell me it ends _there,"_ Seth took a dangerous step forward. "I'm begging you, Quincy to please tell me that _it ends there."_

Percy chimed in.

"We learned much from what we've studied from the riots in Miami, Los Angeles, Baltimore and countless other cities in this country over the years. The authorities expect black folks to do what they've always done in the past. They expect us to torch our neighborhoods. And though there is an element of ignorant motherfuckers who embrace such stupidity, our people have a much broader agenda on the table. We have shipped buses and buses of our people to strategic places all over the city. They are armed, angry and focused just like our cell that you've ridden with tonight."

"Oh my, God, please no."

Quincy said, "It should already be underway."

"And you had Xavier Prince killed for _this_?" Seth asked with some gruff in his voice. "You murdering son of a bitch—"

" _Shut up, Doctor."_ Quincy gave his voice some base. "I meant what I said when I spoke to him last. I loved Xavier Prince like a brother. Do you think it was easy for me to snub his life out the way I did after all he and his family has done for people of color? Who is the insane one now?"

"You're a smart man, Quincy. You're also very bold. A House in Chains has vast resources but I refuse to believe that you pulled this off alone. You _must_ have had help." And Seth paused to weigh the gravity of what putting his theory to voice. "And by my God in Heaven...I believe that I know where that help came from."

And then, from almost nowhere, Dr. Seth Dupree, Quincy Morgan, Percy, the Peacekeepers— _all_ of them found themselves surrounded by what easily had to be an armed brigade of 50 or so white men.

The Peacekeepers pointed their weapons in a vain attempt to intimidate such a large force. Percy pleaded with his own troops to hold their fire.

After a tense moment of silence, one man who looked the part of a raptor in a forest full of T-Rexes stepped to the forefront.

"I've waited a hell of a long time for this moment, Quincy Morgan." The man who announced himself as James Carter said. "And I know that I won't leave here disappointed."

D r. Seth Dupree didn't know whether to mourn his previous captor's imitate demise or embrace it.

The Gray Man only knew that the question was soon to be raised and answered if _any_ of them were worthy of survival.
Episode 7 Scar

Chapter Twenty

When our homes and our House are in order at last, we will turn out attention to the Rooster. They must formally apologize for their transgressions, pay reparations to and pass legislation recognizing our full equality under the law. Further acts of neglect, insult, or insolence will be viewed as a final act of aggression against our people. Any such hostility will be met and returned with in kind. Make no mistake; our response will be without borders or remorse. This is the Vision of our Future.

-Xavier Prince
Serena

**SE Marietta, 26** th **Day**

The piano:

Serena Tennyson or Oracle to those who knew that it was wise to fear her visions, hadn't played on one of these in decades; She sat on the stool with her knees up and pecked at a key and then a second and third until she found a melody that had grown familiar to her.

And to the one she'd been forced to destroy.

She'd gone through the set up this updated command center at a new hotel whose owner was secretly—and as importantly, a _silent_ friend to Pandora. Considering the locale and the wondrous view of Metro Atlanta, the man had outdone himself and would be rewarded for his time and attention. Those underneath her command that she respected— trust would be far too strong a term for it— advised her that a change of scenery at this point of the campaign would be wise if not prudent. Rohm reminded her of the allies and friends of their movement being butchered at the hands of Quincy Morgan and an elite cell of Peacekeepers in his company. Her people thought it highly unlikely—perhaps even _suicidal_ for a House in Chains sergeant at arms to make a personal play for her but why risk it.

Otherwise, their current operation was going forward and well as planned. Pandora was taking its own offensive against supporters, community leaders and The Board in all of the major cities across the country. The wounds that their enemies were inflicting on Pandora were superficial at best. Their operation seemed to be focused on pulling off guerilla tactics like desperate terrorist. Those left behind by the death of Xavier Prince were poisoning a good man's legacy and that of his father Isaac Prince—the Caretaker.

And it _would_ stop. It was just a simple matter of time.

She got up from the piano for the moment, worked her way to the fireplace and tossed a pinched finger full of sand into the flames as she called out the names of each individual lost to the barbarism of the enemy over the past few hours. She'd honored the people of color who were lost in the wee hours of the 411 operation. She'd better damn well honor her own solders in this conflict.

She whispered the name of Raymond Rice...and tossed in her last pinch of sand into the flames.

And then Oracle sat herself down at the piano and played for who knew how long until she someone nudging her on the shoulder blade.

"Rohm," Serena heart fluttered. She must be really tiring if she wasn't hearing and _feeling_ people approach her. _This madness must stop. "_ Please sit down."

"I'm sorry if I started you, Serena." The younger woman dressed all in black gave her leader a once over. "Serena, have you been crying? Are you alright?"

Serena stifled any further questioning by offering the other woman a quick smile. It was a warm but brief one that Rohm might have missed if she blinked at the wrong time.

Serena asked her to sit down again. The younger woman crossed one black pant leg over the other, but squeezed Oracle's hand while she did.

"I'm glad you came, Danielle." Serena told her. "I asked you here because I need to ask you something important?"

"What is it, Serena?"

"You've told me, or more than one occasion, about your spiritual beliefs."

"I have."

"I was wondering what is it that you do when your faith wavers."

Rohm sat back and rested her head on the cushion before sitting back up in full attention mode.

"I guess that I pray for clarity of mind and spirt. In Christianity faith is the ultimate test of our love for our Lord. He passes that love down to us...his children, and through His example we pass that love and faith on to those who matter the most to us." She said. "But make no mistake, Serena that faith is under constant scrutiny. That is why the Bible teaches us to pray."

"So the faith you speak of," Serena said. "It is like the faith you've shown in me."

Rohm smiled through her black lipstick.

"Of course, Serena," She said. "You've given me no reason for my faith to waver in you."

Serena stood at her full height for a moment, and then turned and sat herself in front of the piano once more—and began to stroke the keys as if she'd never missed one of her mother's lessons from all of those years ago.

Rohm said, "I heard you playing through the door just before I came in. I admit to being curious when you requested the piano come with this latest command center. I know how you feel that furniture, for the most part, is a waste of space in a room. I didn't even know that you played." Rohm closed her mouth long enough to take in an ear full. "That song is beautiful. Is it an original composition? I can remember hearing the piece somewhere before, but I can't quite picture where."

"It is called _Death is in the air Tonight._ It is Xavier Prince's song."

"Exactly," Rohm nodded, pleased with her own recollection. " _Death is in the air tonight._ He played it quite a few times while he was under my surveillance: Sometimes as he ate his meals, once when he sexed one of his lady friends and every night before he went to sleep. I remember when you have me secretly mail him the CD. I must admit that I never tired of hearing it play myself. Where did you first come in contact with the song?"

"Before my father rose to fly with the Dragon he wrote and composed music in his spare time."

"Your father was very talented."

"He was at that." Serena nodded, nearly smiling again at her father's memory. "And yet, I believe that his raw abilities had very little to do with the origin of this composition."

"I don't understand?"

"Danielle, my father composed this song knowing that his fate was already sealed." Serena said with some urgency. "He composed it for _me_."

The hotel's phone rang.

Serena hesitated...she glared at the receiver for a minute—and continued playing as if she were never interrupted.

"Aren't you going to answer that, Serena?" Rohm said in a cautious tone.

"In exactly two minutes they will call back," Serena played louder then. She raised her voice loud enough to be heard. "And when they do, answer it for me and put the call on the speaker."

120 seconds later the phone indeed did ring again. Rohm looked to Serena briefly, got to her feet and did as Pandora's undisputed leader requested. After that the younger woman folded her arms over her small breast and remained standing. Serena stopped playing in her own time and no sooner, but finally allowed her long fingers to rest idly on the keyboard.

"You are an ally, Danielle, but I need to know if you are truly a _friend_. Friends don't keep secrets from another. If we are to continue on with _this_ , Danielle," Serena said in a quiet voice. "I need to expose you to the truth... _all_ of it. I need to test your faith in me.

Quincy Morgan was the man behind the voice on the speaker.

"Serena, are you _there_?"

Serena replied, "I am, Mr. Morgan. I am here. I need to know if you've got it done. Did James Carter track your movements as we both anticipated? Is that hatemonger there?"

Danielle Rohm—Shooter's thin black lips part into an O.

"He did at that. You're betrayal caught him completely off balance and by surprise. I thought the smug son of a bitch would fall to his knees and cry. You should have seen the sense of hopelessness bearing down on him when his men refused to follow the order to kill me and my Peacekeepers. We were completely surrounded, out manned and outgunned. It was priceless."

"Good. Did you do everything that I've asked of you, Quincy?"

"I did. As per our agreement we allowed the 50 or so men who joined him in the pursuit to vacate the scene without incident—"

"And James Carter—did you proceed as I asked—"

"Yes, Serena we beat him to a pulp. He is so very dead. And before you ask, we left a positive way to identify him quickly beyond DNA for the authorities when they find him in the coming days."

"What did you leave behind for them to find, Quincy?"

"We cut off his head." The man on the other end of the speaker phone said. Rohm gasped. Serena blinked her eyes rapidly. "We left no marks on it just as you asked. It's clean. The note that you prepared in advance is attached to his skull; the title of _No Hiding_ Place—whatever in the hell that means—is in clear script and view."

Serena exhaled very deeply.

Rohm looked as if _she_ were the Dragon. She looked as if she could breathe fire thanks to the fury brewing inside of her.

"Very well, Quincy." Serena said, but never took her eyes off of Rohm. "You have avenged Xavier Prince's humiliation at Princeton by an uncivilized man with his ancient ideals. As I've said before, James Carter and others like him have no place in Pandora's new world order. Our trade is now complete; the life of Xavier Prince for the life of James Carter...an eye for an eye."

"I believe that alliance is now at an end and the war can continue?"

"I believe that you are correct, Quincy." Serena said. "Of course, you could use this opportunity to surrender your remaining forces to me and help prevent a further escalation of hostilities."

"Save it, Serena," Quincy Morgan said in a loud and clear voice. "I know that humor is not your strong suit. How about this for a plot twists...if you truly want to prevent this escalation as you call it, why don't you hand over the exact location of Atlanta's missing children."

Daniele Morgan could stay still and silent no longer. She took as large strides as her petite frame allowed her until she was standing over the telephone.

"She's perfectly serious, Morgan. I'm positive that you used the time that Serena's cloak of protection allowed you to kill many of Pandora's supporters—our _people._ I will tell you this: If you continue along this path of behavior you and whoever follows you are headed for destruction. I personally guarantee that you will be dead before sunrise and your cause will be dead soon after that."

Serena could almost feel Quincy Morgan smiling through the speaker.

"Damn, Serena, you sure know how to recruit them. In another time or another circumstance I would have loved to have someone with that type of fire working for me. You just have to love her spirit." And then his tone turned serious, almost as if someone else was speaking. "But you are right about one thing, Shooter: By the morning I _will_ be dead. Just remember that Pandora's arrogance has granted me my own Whirlwind, my victory. I'm not too proud to thank you, Serena. I couldn't have pulled it off without you. Goodbye, Serena, I hope you burn in Hell."

The next thing that both women heard was a dial tone.

In the next minute or so, Serena turned her attention to Rohm who still had her back to her.

"Are you surprised?"

"I'm disappointed, Serena." Rohm turned around. "You had something of a strategic importance to gain here, as well as the long term political ramifications after this skirmish between us...and them is over." The younger woman leaned against the piano's frame. It was black on black, almost transparent to the naked eye. "I can think of several scenarios. Trusting Quincy Morgan to have Xavier Prince killed for you was a risky but logical move. You also knew that James Carter wouldn't pass on the opportunity to get at the newest leader of a House in Chains after Xavier Prince survived his onslaught all of those years ago. You _have_ preached it over and over again to me and our other comrades the need to disassociate ourselves from the old guard, the old image of organizations like Pandora. We a _re_ preaching patriotism and not hate. We are pushing for a better tomorrow for _all_ Americans but maintaining the racial status quo in this country."

Serena nodded.

"Pandora will stand victorious tonight, tomorrow, or the next day but it is important to me that we do not have to deal a House in Chains a crippling, fatal blow."

Rohm stepped into Serena's personal space.

"Is there more, Serena?" She asked. "You mentioned that you were going to test my faith in our cause, in you?"

Serena only began to play her song once again. She slowed the melody to a near crawl so her voice could be heard over her playing.

"As you've said, Danielle, the murder of James Carter was a necessary evil." Serena stopped playing. "But what do you feel about the maiming of his wife?"

" _Oh my, God_ ," Rohm said. "Are you telling me that a House in Chains wasn't responsible for shooting Carter's wife? It wasn't an errant shot as so many people have theorized all of this time? You ordered a hit on this _civilian?"_

"No," Serena said as a matter of fact. "You witnessed it when I defied Pilot's orders to cease our operations. You saw how difficult the decision that I made to press on was for me. You saw that the terrible price that both Raymond Rice and I paid for that decision. It was as tough a decision that I've ever made since I was recruited to this organization by Isaac Prince so long ago. James Carter was a dangerous man. I needed something that would push him over the edge from a mental and emotional stand point. Killing his wife would enrage him but after a period of grief that all humans share—he would have regained his focus. Yet, having his wife maimed, having him have to see her like that—well it _did_ enrage him, but also kept him off balanced. He made mistakes." Serena said and after a moment of pause. "So I trusted no one, not even the Shooter to do this task. I took the precision shot myself."

" _She was a civilian, Serena."_ Rohm could hold her fury back no longer. "She was an innocent civilian."

"She is. She is also no different than Thomas Pepper's housekeeper that you murdered in cold blood and no different than those boys being held at the compound by Louis Keaton—a known pedophile."

Rohm rounded her small hand into a fist.

" _You promised me integrity, Serena. You gave your word that some lines would not be crossed. You agreed with me that we were doing God's work."_

"Yes, I did. I also gave my word to Isaac Prince, before he _truly_ died, that Pandora would end this conflict with as few civilian casualties as possible. Everything that I've done so far has been consistent with that philosophy. There is an element out there, Danielle that is contemplating _genocide_ against people of color...a _Whirlwind_. I don't know who. I don't know how. I do know that such an action cannot stand. I won't have it on my conscious or legacy."

Rohm whipped around and stormed out of her leader's hotel room without closing the door behind her—leaving Serena alone with her conscious and her legacy.
Seth

**Cobb County; Buckhead, 26** th **Day**

James Carter's severed head:

Dr. Seth Dupree couldn't help but glare at it as much as he tried to look away. Maggots and scores of other pest were already working their way through open any open passageway on the way down his neck; and all along his lifeless eyes continued to glare up past Seth into the smoky Atlanta night.

Seth would never forget what had transpired over the past half hour. He would never forget when Carter's heavily armed militia surrounded Quincy Morgan and his Peacekeepers. He would never forget how the banter of threat and counter threats volleyed from one camp to the other. He would never forget the name calling and the insults and the near exchange of gunfire that would have surely left him for dead.

He would always remember when Carter himself offered _him_ a way out of this. The last woman who Quincy had allowed to live took him up on his offer without hesitation and spit at the spot where the sergeant at arms had been standing. Seth almost accepted his conditions. He _almost_ had.

And yet he had refused temptation. _I stayed with you, Quincy, because you were the devil that I already knew._

And so he had prepared himself to die then. There looked to be no other alternative but to perish alongside with Quincy and his Peacekeepers. Seth felt his brain cells at a tug of war with his gut.

He remembered seeing the images of his friends who'd died during and since the boating accident that ultimately had set him off on this path to who he was and _wh_ ere he was tonight.

He saw Denise Prince take her leap of faith out of the window, while he was helpless and impotent to stop her.

And he visualized Angel, his wife, all alone at the mercy or Roxanne Sanchez.

But he was alive.

He was s _till_ alive.

He'd chosen wisely.

After Quincy Morgan and this woman...Serena, finished their phone conversation over the speaker for all to hear, Seth would always remember James Carter turning four shades of white—

All of this while his entourage simply turned away.

And in over two decades of performing surgery, the Gray Man had in his collective experience seen as battered and beaten a body as he did the mutilated carcass of one James Carter.

Seth knew it to be true until Carter's men turned over the woman who had wrongly thought that she'd seen the last of Quincy Morgan.

In the minutes since, Seth had gone from angry to bewilder to thankful to angry again.

He was damned angry right now.

He jacked Quincy Morgan up by his collar until both of them were up against a nearby Volvo.

" _I want you to listen to me,"_ He yelled into the other man's face. Quincy turned away. " _Don't turn your back on me you son of a bitch."_

Quincy held him off with ease with his forearm, barely breathing hard or working up a sweat. Percy took two steps towards the combatants but Seth saw Quincy flash him a muted, confident look that he would handle this. Seth was little more than a nagging mosquito flying around to be swatted down this Atlanta night.

Quincy moved with a speed that defied explanation that defied the laws of _gravity._ He spent Seth around until the Gray Man was pinned on the car and maneuvered through a combo with lighting speed and accuracy.

Seth found himself the victim of a half dozen or more punches and kicks to what seemed to affect every inch of his torso down, while he rolled around on the asphalt again struggling for breath.

After a moment, Seth squatted down closer to Seth, looking like Johnny Bench.

"Our time together has been...educational, for both you and me, Doctor, but alas, that time has come to an end. Just before James Carter made his long awaited appearance, Percy here reminded me that we have more pressing business elsewhere in metro Atlanta. If you will excuse me, I intend to see to it."

_He's just one man,_ the voice inside of him, the Gray Man whispered in his ear. _If you can kill him, you may save more lives than you ever have on that surgical table._

Seth knew that he had survived this long for a reason. He'd chosen willingly to stay behind with the Peacekeepers when common sense and a healthy fear of dying told him otherwise.

It was time for him to put the last minutes of his life to good use.

He back handed Quincy—but once again, as if this scene were on a repeat cycle, the other man retaliated with yet another lethal combination of jabs and kicks that put Seth's ass on the asphalt quickly and viscously.

Quincy hopped on top of Seth where he'd fallen and raised his hand and arm in a jackhammer like motion—as if he were going to swing through for a killing blow.

" _Do it,"_ Seth shouted at him with his last ounce of strength and will. And in an instance it was all gone; the strength _and_ the will. "What are you waiting for, Quincy? You should complete my education. At the end of the day I'm just one of _them._ You've murdered plenty of white people over the past few hours. Murdering one more Rooster should come easily to you by now."

Quincy got off of him— and sat down, and rubbed his own chin. He then surprised the Gray Man further—by extending his hand to him, so that he could sit up as well. They both sat there for a time, to Percy's growing impatience, breathing in the smoky air that was consuming the city now.

"We've rid the world of a hatemonger known as James Carter." Quincy said without preamble and looked ever briefly where the dead man's head rested on the concrete. "America and the world are better places for it."

"There are thousands, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women like him still out there, Quincy. And as precise and lethal as your operation and your operatives are, you can't possibly hope to kill them all."

Quincy nodded once.

"You're right, Doctor. You've been right about a lot of things since our paths crossed hours ago."

Seth painfully scooted himself over until he was face to face with Quincy Morgan.

"I understand the need for you to save face, especially in front of your people. I do. But is there any way possible for you to stymie the remainder of this operation you are planning. Call of this... _Scar_ of yours, Quincy. I'm asking you. I'm _begging_ you to stop this."

Quincy turned and his face looked almost apologetic in the moon light and he slowly shook his head in finality.

And for the first time and the last, Seth thought he saw Quincy's eyes go moist with tears.

"My grandmother was so very right," Quincy said after a time. "She was a grand old lady before death took her from me."

"Your grandmother," Seth searched his memory banks and found the data stored somewhere in his head. "You mentioned her to me in the last minutes before Carter and his men showed. You mentioned Scar. You didn't finish telling me what the connection was."

Quincy got to his feet and brushed the dirt off his clothes though the blood, brains and marrow would remain. He once again extended his hand to Seth who rose as well, but not without difficulty. Sporadic gunfire sounded off like someone one was popping another bag of popcorn for the early morning show. Seth could hear screaming.

And then Seth heard something that he _hadn't_ heard before tonight—or _anytime_ ever in his life.

The Gray Man heard an explosion.

And after he'd turned to see where the noise had originated from, he'd twisted in time to see a mini mushroom cloud rise through the haze of the Atlanta skyline.

" _Oh my, God,"_ The question sounded as if it had originated from someone outside of his own body. _"What in the hell are those explosions?"_

"Sometimes you have to learn life's lessons the hard way. That is the lesson that my grandmother left me with. Sometimes life's lessons leave you with a _scar_ so that you never forget."

Seth struggled to catch his breath.

He felt his own body losing its equilibrium...its balance and he slumped and fell backwards until he was once again in the seated position that he had started this night in.

He now understood to by definition what Scar _truly_ was.

"All of the indiscriminate killing, the tactical executions, the sniper attacks of the APD...none of that was going to be enough to satisfy your House was it, Quincy?"

"You reminded of something earlier that I already knew, Doctor, that my ultimately people couldn't possibly win this conflict with Pandora and I agreed with you." Quincy pointed a long manicured nail towards the due South so that Seth would look in that direction as well. He asked Percy for the time and a third explosion and subsequent fireball appeared like clockwork when Percy replied with the current time. "All of the strife that went on during the Civil Rights Movement and the Watts Riots before our time, Doctor. We lived through the Rodney King, Ferguson and Baltimore riots over the past few years; the fires in the streets of America after the nation's first Black president were killed. All of this, _all_ of this has or will be forgotten by the residents of this nation eventually. All of the lives, all of the sacrifices, Doctor, how do we dare forget?"

"Maybe they have been discarded, but not forgotten." Seth said, the hair standing up on his wrist and behind his neck. "I don't think that anyone has truly forgotten."

Another explosion lit up the skyline.

"They won't ever forget _this,_ Doctor. Scar and its aftermath will be remembered _forever._ " Quincy walked down the street 10 or so steps towards where the explosions were originating rom in Fulton County and his Peacekeepers followed. He turned back one last time one las time to where Seth was standing. "Farewell, Doctor."

Seth said quickly, "Alright, Quincy... _alright,_ Scar contains even more destruction than Pandora or anyone else who have believed a House in Chains was capable of. I get it, Quincy. I get the symbolism. Ok, you're blowing things up. It's bold. It's unprecedented. I still don't get what's so damned _memorable_ about it? What makes these pipe bombs or car bombs or _whatever_ explosive devices you are using do different, so special?"

Quincy started to walk away but stopped. He looked towards Seth preparing to spring his final surprise but his eyes held no joy in the coming presentation.

"Go to the gymnasium near Bel Air Street." Quincy asked Percy for the time once again. "From here it is a good twenty minute run. If you hurry you'll see all of the fruits of my people's labor there. You will see for yourself why history will never forget a House in Chains. They will never forget the Vision of our Future."

Seth ran as hard as he could manage considering his age, injuries and lack of everyday exercise. He would pause and lean on a light pole to catch his wind, glance around him to see if he were still angling in the right direction and start again. He wouldn't have believed that he was capable of coming close to completing this run without passing out, but he'd survived so much this night—

He had proven Roxanne Sanchez wrong.

He ran and then he ran some more.

He'd owed all of those who'd died in his place tonight and over the years to make it to Bel Air. He owed them all that he should be there to bear witness to what Quincy Morgan and a House in Chains had plotted for so very long.

He finally had the gymnasium in his sights...before his legs went wobbly and he tumbled down a hill all the way downwards. He struggled to his feet again—his ribs aching. He was cut and bruised as well, but otherwise he was no worse for the wear. _What do I do now?_ In all of the time that it took to get here, he never gave it much thought to what he would do if and when he reached this place.

The city was using the gym and other buildings of its size for shelters and would welcome people of _all_ colors and races who wanted to escape the dangers of the streets. By the shape and size of it, Seth estimated that if could easily fit 200 to 250 people inside comfortably. He mostly saw people of his skin tone entering and leaving. One man had brought in a two bags of food.

The Gray Man gathered his thoughts: Somewhere inside that gym or in this nearby he came to the quick conclusion that a House in Chains had an explosive planted in the vicinity.

So now what? Do I got down there and publicly announce my belief that there is a bomb somewhere nearby? Good luck with explaining that.

Even worse...they may _believe_ him after all. Would they exit in an orderly way or would they more than likely trample one another while they fled the building for the lives.

And how did Peacekeepers know that the city would use this or any other specific building for a shelter anyway?

The Gray Man was still missing a very large piece of the puzzle and time was short.

Seth checked the stopwatch that Quincy had one of his men give him before he began his travels.

He sighed. Time had indeed run out.

Nothing... _nothing_ but... _wait_...Seth watched a young black girl; she couldn't be any older than 17 or 18 at the most, arrive at the front entrance. She was a pretty thing too but he could only see her face because the rest of her body was wrapped in a trench coat.

Why is she wearing—?

Dr. Seth Dupree knew that the nights in this part of Georgia at the base of the Smoky Mountains could get cool like this night one was, but not to that extent.

Obviously the two men tasked at welcoming the refugees inside felt troubled as he was feeling at that same exact moment.

_Oh my, God,_ Seth had put it all together. _Oh my God in Heaven, she's wearing some type of devise underneath that coat._

She's a suicide bomber.

It all made sense to him now...if unadulterated killing _ever_ made sense to a human being.

Quincy Morgan _was_ correct after all.

They both knew that never before in the history of the United States had Americans seen such brutality...such sacrifice. The country would awake in a few hours and read stories on their tablets and phones and newsstands how hundreds—maybe even _thousands_ of young people of color strapped bombs to their chest and killed thousands and thousands of mostly white civilians.

Regardless to how this conflict ended over the days and weeks to come, _this_ would leave a scar on the national conscious that would _never_ be forgotten.

Seth yelled and waved his hands and arms in the air as he charged down the hill with only the gym in his sights. He increased his speed but it was as if the world had been reduced to moving in slow motion and his weary legs along with it.

The guards did seem to notice him, but as they glanced in his general direction to see what all those noise was all about—the young woman used their lack of attention to her to sprint past them and disappeared inside.

" _Noooooooooo."_

And then there was a loud explosion—and a portion of the gymnasium's roof blew away from its holding.

Dr. Seth Dupree could not say how long it took him to even remotely begin to recover from the effects of the explosion. He was bleeding from the nose...from his ear...from what felt like everywhere. The Gray Man's hearing was suspect and he could taste blood in his mouth. Dozens of smaller fires were popping up where he'd fallen.

And the two men who were watching the entrance and been blown into _several_ pieces of men on the hill around him well.

Dr. Seth Dupree wept as hard as he ever had.

He cried. He screamed. He pounded the ground around him until his knuckles matched the bleeding that his ears, nose and mouth had done.

Roxanne Sanchez had been right about him after all.

It was no way in the hell, he had survived it all. He would surely wake from his next slumber a _dead_ man. No one could have witnessed what he had tonight and survived it, no one.

He cried and pounded the ground for a time longer—

And then the ground seemed to pound _back_ for nearly 30 seconds after _._

He stopped crying with a suddenness that frightened him further. He lifted his head from the ground thinking that another suicide pretty teenaged suicide bomber had fulfilled her destiny...but as quickly realized yet one more bout of _madness_ had returned to the Atlanta area just in time to make an already difficult situation now impossible.

Weary and distraught Seth lay himself down on the hard canvas.

He prayed.

And then Dr. Seth Dupree wondered who in the city had survived the earthquake.
Thomas

**Downtown Atlanta, 26** th **Day**

The dying man spoke.

He told Thomas Pepper a story more horrifying than any sane man would ever wish to hear and keep his sanity intact. It was a tale filled with words of machetes and precision and overwhelming numbers and stealth and butchery.

Thomas had arrived at the downtown hotel ten minutes ago. He'd ventured the rest of the way over here over the loud and persistent protest of the Black minister who'd begged him not to return to the streets—at least until after sunrise. Thomas had convinced the man that he would be fine and promised to return when he'd finished doing what he had felt he needed to do. He never got into specifics but the other man easily could see the guilt and the unease in his eyes. Finally, the minister had been resigned to nodding his bald head and said that no matter whatever sin that he'd committed, he was sure that God would be with him.

And then he sent Thomas Pepper back out into the Atlanta night from which he came.

He'd alternated between running and walking and had made it nearly six blocks to the base of the hotel without further incident. He'd seen troubling acts all along the way but had left the manner to those involved and left well enough alone.

The desk manger—the dying man—was the first person living person Thomas had come across inside the hotel's lobby.

If anyone dared calling a man lying in a pool of his own blood with his throat partially cut and the top knuckle of each finger snatched from the rest of his hand living. But when Thomas could stand to glance around his perimeter, all of the dead and broken bodies told him more about what had happened here than any story this man could tell him.

And yet, he struggled on trying to share with Thomas what he'd seen. The dying man told him that some young punks had crashed through the front entrance with an automobile for God's sake. The Zero Hour had only been minutes old when they entered the premises. They robbed the hotel's register and everyone who had been unfortunately caught here in the wrong place and certainly at the wrong time.

Thomas could feel a frown growing on his face, especially when he glanced at the carnage in this lobby. _Do you mean that some deranged kids did this—?_

The dying man found the strength from somewhere to shake his head once and again with an emphatic _no._

The punks' self-proclaimed victory was short lived and the territory that they'd claimed as their very own was snatched from them within minutes. The Peacekeepers made quick work of the overmatched thugs. Thomas could see that they'd taken the time to gut a couple of the young men and used their blood to paint V's all over the previously all white walls.

The Peacekeepers weren't done however.

The dying man told Thomas that the vigilantes turned their attention to the employees of the hotel and any civilian who dared to get in their way. They asked only _one_ question and they asked it again and again and _again_ until someone provided the information that they needed to accomplish what they'd come for.

The question of the night was: Where is Lucy Burgess?

Thomas swallowed then and found that his breathing was becoming more difficult.

The dying man told him how brave and courageous that his manger had been. He told him how that man refused to allow _anyone_ to invade the privacy of anyone staying at one of _his_ hotel.

The dying man told Thomas Pepper that after they'd beheaded his boss that he was _not_ nearly so brave or courageous. He explained that he'd lost his top knuckle on each finger for them wrongly thinking that he was stalling when in actuality, his nerves would not allow him to thumb through the computer database any faster.

The slash across the throat only served as a parting gift when he'd told whoever their leader was to go to hell when he provided them Lucy's hotel room number at last.

Thomas laid the dying man as gently as he could must on the floor and for the second time in an hour or so had promised a complete stranger that he would return. He carefully made his way through the hallway to the elevator. The Peacekeepers had left an easy trail of blood and dead bodies for Thomas Pepper to follow. Were these poor saps just unlucky bystanders or did they hear the exchange at the front desk and made a valiant but ultimately futile stand to right a wrong?

The elevator was out of service to his mild annoyance. Thomas searched around and quickly found the stairs. He took a deep breath, still trying to recover from his long dangerous trek to this hotel from his own one.

He saw more blood.

He saw a handful of more mutilated bodies.

He saw more blood paintings of the letter V. _Is that for your vision, Xavier or for your victory?_

This hotel had been classy enough, probably too nice for what Thomas Pepper patronized hotels for. He wouldn't take any of his flames to one this nice or expensive even if he'd done a weekend getaway.

He and Lucy had never spent a night in a place like this one.

Thomas Pepper was nearly out of breath again when he finally reached the floor where Lucy's room would be located. He felt his heart rate quickening and he was pouring sweat. Two bodies of hotel personnel were lying of the carpet near the closest room. They'd looked as if they'd been shot in the head. A third person, dressed in a maid's outfit, had her throat opened from ear to ear.

A door opened when he walked by.

He cursed and slid his large frame along the wall and tried and failed to make himself small.

It was just one of the hotel's guests who had peeked out—and quickly slammed the door shut before he could open his mouth to ask a question.

Two or three other doors opened and the traumatized guests nervously watched as he passed. _What have you poor bastards heard in these halls tonight? What have you people seen?_

Thomas produced Lucy's key unnecessarily as he stood in the shadow of her already opened door.

He made himself as small as he could again, but he had already made up his mind before he entered that there was only _one_ person on the premises. A House in Chains had come and likely had gotten the gift that they'd been promised. There was no need to leave anyone of their people behind.

The room was dark as they'd doused all of the artificial lighting—but there was a smell of candles, yes _that_ was what the smell exactly was, coming from just around the first corner of the suite. He nearly tripped over something... a broken lamp or perhaps it was a vase. They'd trashed the place for sure. No, her suite had been destroyed. The Peacekeepers had left nothing unmolested from their fury.

Thomas got down on all floors, trying not to panic completely. He inched forward towards the candle light and the candle smell. He came across a woman's blouse and then a pair of pants. They'd both been cut to shreds with something very sharp. And then he turned another corner and felt something _cool and moist_ on his elbows and on the back of his arms. He stopped long enough to smell it and realized it was blood.

If Thomas Pepper had any hope of finding Lucy alive that hope was crushed with the blood sighting. He wanted to weep. He wanted to turn back and crawl back out of the door and exit the hotel from which he can.

He didn't want to look up but he did nonetheless.

He didn't want to see the silhouette of a female's figure that the candle light provided him.

He stood up and flicked on the nearest light switch so he would have no further doubt of what he'd seen and what he was _seeing_ and the nightmares that would rule his nights during the Hour of the Wolf for the rest of his natural life.

He saw a nude Lucy Burgess hanging by her extremities on an X in a makeshift poses as if she'd been crucified.

"Lucy," Thomas said in a voice far calmer than he actually felt. And then a sudden realization struck what little humanity still remained inside of him. " _God almighty, what have they done to you Lucy?"_

Lucy moved her head so subtlety that Thomas barely realized it. It looked to him as if she'd mustered all of her remaining strength and energy to accomplish such a small feat. She was alive...but probably only for a few minutes longer.

Thomas used an old boy scout knife to quickly but carefully cut her down. He had to be careful though and not let her shifting dead weight topple him over as well. Just as he had with the dying man at the front desk, Thomas laid her down on the carpet as gently as he could. Her eyes were blackened and swollen nearly shut from being pounded on repeatedly with someone's fist. Lucy's nose had been broken in more than one place, her lips busted and several of her teeth shattered.

The more Thomas looked at his former lover's body, the worse it had been for her and the worse it was for him right now.

There were burn marks of X's all over her upper torso that nearly covered every inch of skin. She coughed up blood—and when Thomas held her close so that she wouldn't choke on it, he got a good feel of the bullwhip marks that shrouded her entire back.

"What have they done to you?" Thomas asked as he began to cry. "What have _I_ done to you, Lucy?"

Lucy would have cried with him, if only she had the strength. She would have cried with him if only she had the tears left inside to offer. Instead she managed only a pained cough...and rubbed his hairy squared jaw with her tiny fingers. Lucy's hand _never_ looked more childlike than she did right then.

Thomas heard himself say, "I've got to get you some help, Lucy. I've got to get you to the hospital right now. Maybe there is time—"

Lucy had found another small bout of strength and shook her head at him and it broke his heart all over again.

"It's too late for any of that, darling."

Thomas teared up again.

"I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm _so_ sorry."

"And I forgive you," She said with what passed for as a smile in that moment. "At the end we all pay for our sins." Lucy hesitated for the longest time and Thomas thought she was gone. "I'm paying for all of mine right now. And _you_ will as well...darling. You will pay as well."

And then Lucy Burgess's small frame went instantly heavy as she died.

Thomas finished laying her down and took the time to cover her nude and scarred body with the spread off of the nearby bed.

He numbly made his way back out her hotel room, down the stairs and out of the hotel into the streets again.

It wasn't until Thomas Pepper was a block away until he looked down at his palms and saw that he had blood on his hands until they—and the entire _world_ shook uncontrollably for a minute a longer.

And one block from there Thomas Pepper wondered who had survived the earthquake?
Chris

**In Route north, out of the city, 26** th **Day**

A flat tire;

_What else could possibly go wrong tonight?_ Special Agent Christopher Prince thought to himself as he removed to deflated tire and rim from Blue's car.

"I don't believe this. I refuse to believe that this is happening right now." He said more to himself than the two women who were accompanying him.

"Well, believe it," Blue said, pacing. She had her government issued piece out and scanned the perimeter again for dangers seen and possibly unseen. "It happened—get over it. The proof is in your hands." And then she saw Chris scoop out the spare from the trunk she sighed and added: "And it looks like my spare is a piece of shit too."

Chris examined it quickly and rolled it away, the wobbling action convincing him that he and his partner had come to the same result.

"Damn," He said.

"Why did you take this street anyway, Chris?" Blue asked, using her gun to mark their recent path to this neighborhood. "It would have been quicker to hop on Marion and take it all the way up to the 285 junction."

"You're right, Blue. It would have been the quicker and more direct route—if we were going to drive back to the FBI field office?"

"And why wouldn't we, Chris?" Blue pointed her free hand at Grace Edwards, who was leaning against Blue's useless car. "She needs to be fully debriefed and the sooner the better."

Grace folded her arms and took a deep breath exercising extreme patients. She turned her attention solely on the senior partner.

"We didn't agree on that proposition."

"We aren't exercising the democratic process here, sweetheart." Blue shot the other woman a stern glance. "You don't get a vote."

Chris said, "But I _do,_ Tabitha. Remember, our original orders were to find the leaders of a House in Chains. She still is an asset. We can still use her help. She knows where any potential rendezvous point with the Circle may be. She could potentially lead us to them."

"She might do that," Blue nodded in admittance. "Or she might also be manipulating you, Chris."

"Manipulating," Chris stood up straight and bit back the first rising tide of anger he was feeling. "Have you been listening to what's being reported on the radio? Suicide bombers are igniting themselves in shelters, malls and other heavily populated houses of commerce or socialization. Thousands of civilians have been estimated of dying here in such attacks in greater Atlanta alone. The other members of the Circle, led by Quincy Morgan betrayed my brother and are acting without impunity. There is no longer a reason for her to be overly loyal to them. No, I don't have to completely trust her, Tabitha, but in my opinion following where she leads is the most productive course of action."

Grace shifted her weight off of the car.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, Chris. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about the specifics of Scar. I know that I kept the knowledge of the bombers from you. Again, it was our plan that if any of the Circle were out of communication with the others—that it would not stop us from deploying them when the Zero Hour. We had a choice to use them or lose them."

Blue frowned at that.

Grace noted the other woman's expression but continue to focus her gaze and conversation on Chris.

"Xavier and Quincy Morgan worked out the specifics and provisions for unleashing each escalating phase of Scar. Percy, Warren and I were not included in those discussions."

"You see, Chris? You want us to trust her and yet the members of this so called Circle didn't even trust each other with this vital information." Blue said in an increasingly unhappy voice. She showed her overbite.

"Even amongst the Circle, the less that each individual knew about timing details, the less the chance that our operations could be compromised," Grace finally turned her full attention on Agent Blue. "I felt it was totally necessary, especially if any of us were subjected to capture or torture."

"Alright, you were protecting yourselves and this...heinous operation of yours. I get it, Grace. And you protected the location of this rendezvous of any survivors up to this point as well?" Chris asked.

"Yes, that is correct." Grace was nodding. "The signal would be in the form of a specialized text over our cell phones only after Scar had been initiated in full fury. We have the potential to utilize eight different locations depending on what the surviving senior officer feels is the most secure facility at that time." Grace raised her cuffed hands up so that the other two could see her wrist clearly. "As you can see, I've been a little too busy to make that call, even if I had wanted to."

Blue frowned up again.

"Honey, you should find someone who cares. I don't think that anyone of your people outside the Circle expected Quincy Morgan to have Xavier assassinated. More people in your little organization would have tried to stop him. You can't go around terrorizing white folks if you are involved in petty bickering at the top." Blue rubbed her thick brows a second. "I say we confiscate a ride and take her down to the field office, Chris. She's proven that she can't be trusted beyond a reasonable doubt. It's more to this than she's telling. I _know_ that I'm right about this."

Grace planted her shoes into the street.

"Then you had damned be prepared to kill me because I'm not going _anywhere_ near a FBI Field Office or any other government agency building with you or anyone else, Agent Blue."

"The hell you aren't," Blue raised her gun and pointed it at Grace's temple. Chris heard Grace's braids rattle as she turned to face down his partner's sidearm. Blue took an unnecessary step in the other woman's direction. "Lady, I'm done talking to you, I'm done playing with you."

"Good," Grace said as seriously. "I'm glad I don't have to listen to you anymore. But you _should_ listen to me: You better be prepared to use that, Agent Blue."

"I don't think that you will continue to cooperate under the terms that Chris set out for you so in my opinion you are useless to us. The only thing that you can do is to try and escape. And I can't let you do that—

"And I can't let you do this."

Special Agent Christopher Prince had pulled his own gun on his partner.

" _Chris_ ," Blue said in a voice partly stained in surprise, partly stained in hurt. "What are you _doing?"_

"Grace Edwards is trying to serve the greater good of all Americans by remaining here and fully cooperating with us. Thousands have died tonight, Tabitha. How many more thousands will die over the next 24 to 48 hours from now as this thing gets further and further out of hand. I don't see a downside to this, Tabitha. And I gave her my word." Chris said. "I gave her my word, Tabitha."

Blue stepped back from both of them, lowered her gun a half inch.

"Listen, Chris, I know you're distraught after losing your brother the way that you did, especially after we were _so_ close to reaching him in time before the Peacekeeper's loyal to Quincy Morgan did. Damn, Chris, I can appreciate how you must be feeling...really I can."

"Don't be a fool, Tabitha." Chris said in a hard voice and shook his bald head back and forth. "Xavier's death had very little with why I'm doing this."

" _Bullshit,"_

"Tabitha, I gave her my word. That has to mean something."

"You shouldn't talk to me about giving and keeping promises, Chris." Blue had raised her firearm back to where it was previously. She took a step closer to Grace until she was nearly hidden behind her. Chris shadowed her until he had reestablished a clear shot again. "What about the oath you made to your _country?"_

Chris didn't answer. Instead they rounded each other with their weapon trained on the other as they circled Grace Edwards. Chris did the dance with his partner as he sweated bullets. He could smell his own fear...but was it for the fear of being shot by Tabitha Blue—or was it because he was becoming more willing to shoot her with each passing minute. He felt his pulse racing in the wrist of his trigger hand.

He could hear the rustling of the leaves in the background and nearby as another heavy gust of wind passed.

He could hear someone fire a round off in the distance.

He dared not take his eyes off of Blue.

"I don't want you to talk to me about the bureau. Maybe you need a reminder about what happened to me in the recent past, Tabitha." Their dance paused as an imaginary record changed. "This bureau that you speak on and on about so proudly and blindly follow is a broken institution. How many of our fellow agents split and worked as double agents for Serena Tennyson and Pandora over the past few years. Hell, Tabitha, the director himself was leading that outfit over there. How many of our people abandoned their post with the ATF, CIA and other lettered agencies to aid a hate group plot the murder of people of color? How many do you think, Blue?"

"Alright, Chris, I won't argue that point with you, I _can't._ And I give you the same word that I promised myself when I found out about what Raymond Rice has been doing: I won't rest until those who have betrayed us are brought in to justice." And then the dance between the partners resumed. "But I want you to forget about all of those strangers for a minute and focus on the only thing that matters right now—what about _us,_ Chris? What about me? Do you count me among the broken? Is our partnership broken? What about our friendship?"

"I don't want to lose you as a partner or a friend, Tabitha." Chris replied, but kept his gun raised just the same. "You are good cop. You're a better person and you're the most loyal person that I know. I just think that your loyalty is sometimes misguided."

"You talk about loyalty," Blue flashed her overbite as she laughed bitterly. "You are so right, Chris. I am loyal almost to a fault. I'm loyal to the bureau. I'm loyal to you. But something has to give tonight. _Someone_ has to give in tonight. But it won't be me, Chris. Your lady friend here claimed that she was ready to die for her beliefs. One or both of us had damn well been prepared to do the same thing. Are you truly ready to make that call, Christopher? You better not be mistaken especially if you are prepared to pull that trigger and kill me where is stand right now."

Chris pulled his hammer back.

"I don't want to, Agent Blue, but I will."

The dance ends at last as does the imaginary song.

There is only silence.

And then there is only _more_ silence.

Until Chris hears voice calls out from somewhere behind them. Both he and Blue train their guns off of one another and he points his to the North while his partner aims to the South.

"Too bad we won't ever know which one of you would give in. Both of you should put your guns down on the asphalt and kick them away from yourselves and I think that both of you should do it right now."

Chris silently mouthed a curse. He heard nothing but the rustling of the leaves once again and thought that the sound had aided these people in approaching them without being heard. He gives a quick head count. It looked to be a dozen civilians, all white, armed mostly with shotguns and hunting rifles. The man who spoke appeared to be the oldest of his posse. He was bald man perhaps in his mid-60's, wearing overalls that matched the other males in view.

Blue didn't look impressed. She shot him a warning glance and carefully flashed her shield with her free hand.

"Sir, listen to me carefully, this is a police manner. My partner and I would appreciate it if you instructed your people to point your weapons—or better yet, leave us as you found us all together."

"Sorry," He nodded more with his thin lips than with his bald head. "I don't think we can do that."

Blue tried again.

"Sir, I would ask you to take a second look at us. Do you see the stenciled letters on our jackets? Take another look at my badge. Chris flashed his for support. We are FBI Agents on official business. I'll warn you only once that interference in a federal investigation is a felony punishable to very stiff penalties. I kid you not when I say that you are risking jail time here." Blue told him.

The old man nodded in comprehension, but kept his own rifle high and tight in his grip.

"Under normal circumstances your threat might carry more than just a little weight with me, young lady. I'm a law abiding citizen. I always have been. I'm a proud tax payer. But I think that you will agree with me that the events that have transpired over the past few months, week, days and especially the last few _hours_ fail to qualify as normal, even around here. And I'll tell you one more thing: What I have seen tonight with my own eyes tells me that those jackets and shield of yours don't mean diddly squat."

Chris had to admit to being curious about what the old man meant by his last statement. He kept his weapon aimed at Blue but formally introduced himself, his partner and Grace Edwards to all of men wearing overalls asked him his name.

"Martin," The man's answer was quick and proud. Whether Martin was his first or last name Chris could not say. "And, Agent Prince, it would ruin both my night and yours if I had to blow your head off your shoulders after meeting your acquaintance, but I will. I don't trust you. I _can't._ I surely cannot after what I've seen tonight."

"What have you seen, Mr. Martin?" Chris wanted to know now more than ever.

"We've seen men of color dressed in all manners of uniforms tonight: We've seen everything from paramedics to firemen to policemen in person and on TV beating and raping white women all over this city."

"That's impossible," Grace put base in her tone that left no room for rebuttal. "And of course, Agent Prince and I can always depend on white folks like yourself to speak the truth in these matters—"

"You'd be wise to watch your tone, young lady." Martin said in a measured tone, but kept his rifle's barrel trained on Chris more now than before. "You don't know me. You may not _want_ to know me, but if you are implying that me and mine are racist, simply based on how I talk and how we're dressed then you are way off base and out of line. All white folks don't act alike. Assumption is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, in the wrong mind." He looked over the horizon and Chris thought he saw the man's eyes mist just a little. "I was marching through these same streets with Dr. King before either one of you were born."

"Why should I believe that?" Grace asked.

"You can believe whatever in the hell you want." Martin's tone was not kind. And then his voice suddenly softened. "All that I know is that he was a great man. And I know that he would not have approved of any of this." And then Martin lowered his weapon a foot and only had eyes for Special Agent Christopher Prince. "And I know that your father wouldn't have approved this either. How did you and your brother let our world come to _this?"_

"You didn't know my father." Chris tried to mask the feelings of the truths that Serena Tennyson had told him from the others. He tried so fucking hard—"None of us knew him, Martin."

"I don't know what you mean by that, son." Martin pushed the rifle higher, gripped the rifle with all of his might and his left eye disappeared as he peered through the scope. "Anyway, my eyesight ain't what it used to be, but I can still tell you that FBI Agents don't usually pull their side arms on one another. It looks as if I ain't the only one who has trust issues."

"No..." Blue said her voice was barely above a whisper as she lowered her eyes. "FBI agents don't usually behave like this to one another."

"Sir," Chris said. "As far as I can tell, you are the one in control here. If you don't mind, why don't you share some information with me? I want to know more about these men wearing apparel as if they were _official_ personnel of these various public servant organizations? Can you describe them to us? Was there anything memorable about them?"

Martin seemed to be searching his memory banks.

"They were the typical, hard looking types. They were wearing their hair—they were wearing their hair like your smooth talking lady friend there in the nice suit. Most of them had mouths full of gold teeth and they wore baggy pants with their boxers showing." Martin stopped for breath. "We stumbled on them gang raping this teenaged white girl before we negotiated a deal with them."

"Negotiate—"Chris though that Martin had chosen an interesting choice of word to use.

"After we killed a couple of his friends, my friends and I negotiated the unconditional release of the girl for the life of those of his brood still breathing. The accepted, although I never heard the leader speak, his _Deacon_ —yet that's what he called him—did all the yapping for him. The lot of them headed east."

Chris stifled a laugh. Blue wasn't sure what to make of the story. Grace didn't look comfortable at all. She looked as if she were working something uncomfortable in her mind under her own braids.

"Tell me...Mr. Martin, did you hear any of these young men chanting anything?" And when the man didn't answer immediately, "Mr. Martin, did you hear them chanting anything in particular?"

"I don't remember saying that you could speak young lady—"

"I need an answer...please. It could be very important."

Martin scrubbed at his heavy beard.

"Maybe I did...yea, I think that I do. It came out all jumbled as they took turns with the girl, but at first I couldn't make heads or tails of it."

And so Grace Edwards said it for him.

"Yea," Martin's beard seemed to take a life all its own. "Yea, that's it exactly." And then he altered his aim from Chris to Grace. "I told you that I had no reason to trust you. Might be that you're one of them?"

"They were Choir Boys?" Chris said to Grace. "And it sounds as if the Bishop and his Deacon were out leading the troops tonight."

Grace nodded a _yes._

"We need to know how far this altercation happened from this location, Mr. Martin." Grace Edwards asked. Chris could see genuine fear in Grace's eyes for the first time this evening, but it had little to do with being the target of Martin's rifle. "How long ago did this happen?"

"I don't remember—"

" _I need you to think, Mr. Marin,"_ Grace visibly worked to calm herself. "It's very important that you remember these details."

Martin conferred with an associate to his near left.

"I think it was an hour ago. Maybe, just maybe, it was 90 minutes at the top end."

"We've got to go, _now,_ Agent Prince." Grace's braids rattled as her head went on a swivel. "They'll be here soon and probably with what's left of the Choir Boys that survived the Peacekeeper incursion at Carver Housing Apartments."

Chris suddenly became alarmed.

"She's right, Tabitha." Chris said. "Remember the intel that we received on from the agents in the field house. Remember that we were told that the Choir Boys concentrated numbers were in Carver, we knew that they had other smaller cells all over the city. One of those larger cells hung around here."

"That's why they are wearing the FBI garb." Grace added the information, probably from her own information files. "I would bet that they are conducting assaults while they feel they have a perceived advantage. If Mr. Martin's group got the drop on them they are not going to stop until they find you when they feel you are the most vulnerable and avenge those you've killed."

"Do you hear me, Tabitha?" Chris said. "We have to go— _now."_

"I never agreed to any of this, Chris."

"Tabitha, _please,"_

" _Alright,"_ Blue said. "But I need you to put your gun down first."

"I always thought that a lady was supposed to go first."

And so both FBI Special Agents began to lower their guns—

He then the earth moved underneath them—

And Chris could feel his gun fire off a round...

After an unknown number of minutes, Chris picked himself up off the ground and he could see Grace Edwards and Marin and his people around him slowly doing the same.

Everyone but Tabitha Blue was on their feet again.

"Oh no," Chris muttered. And then a louder voice he said: " _Oh, no—"_

He sprinted over to where she was lying flat on her back with a clear head wound. He got on the ground and in an instant he had his partner wrapped into his arms. At first glance, he couldn't tell how deep the bullet had penetrated or how severe her injuries really were. She _was_ bleeding. She _was_ breathing though and he was taking every positive that he could and storing it away.

Grace Edwards pointed through her cuffs in the general direction to where the nearest hospital was.

And then...

And _then—_

"So what do we have here?" A new voice added his to the mix. "Ain't _this_ a bitch?"

Chris recognized the Deacon who was speaking—as usual—for his and the other Choir Boys leader that carried a Bible around, wore a minister's robe and called himself the Bishop.

Your Peacekeepers let the big fish get away, little brother. And tonight we may all pay the price for that mistake.

He laid Blue down on the ground and instructed Grace to put pressure on her wound, while he rose to his feet with his gun discovering a new target.

"Bishop, you don't know how I wish I had the time to do this with you," Chris said to him and his Deacon. The dozen or more other Choir Boys, still dressed as first responders, looked on with fully automatic weapons at their disposal. "My partner's life hangs in the balance. I need to get her to the nearest medical center right away. You are your heathens are in my way of accomplishing this."

Bishop smiled through a mouth full of gold teeth and snapped out of long handgun and held it at an angle that made him look like an old school gangster.

The Deacon spoke as if he could read his leader's mind.

"Well, don't you cry, boy." He said for his Bishop. "But it looks as if that white girl is as good as dead anyway. And if you don't stop pointing that gun at my pastor, so will you."

Chris felt a smile curl on his dark face. _These two clowns are_ everything _that the mass media makes our young people out to be: They believe that we are lazy, arrogant and stupid._ Chris had made himself memorize the report on the Bishop. It had believed that the man had been responsible for fathering nearly a dozen children from nearly that many women—and that was _before_ the Center of Disease Control reported that he'd contacted and was spreading HIV, especially to the harem he'd taken at Carver. He was a lifelong felon including murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

I'll give your Peacekeeper's this, Little Brother, by liberating Carver and shutting down his drug operations there you denied him a valuable source of revenue. And he's been on the run ever since.

_You should have_ stayed _on the run, Bishop._

He could take him out with a single shot but...but at what price? What would happen to Grace Edwards and his partner Tabitha Blue? And he would surely sentence nearly a dozen other civilians from Martin's clan to death as they would have to shoot themselves out of any mess that he'd created.

Bishop seemed to be putting Grace's face to a name...

"Is that my, Grace," The Deacon said for him. "Ain't this something, fellas? I thought I'd never see your pretty face—and the rest of you again, girl."

"I wish I could say the same."

"Yea, you still a cocky, bitch, Grace," Deacon continued on for his Bishop. "But I liked that about you. I should have known you were an undercover hoe. I should have _known._ You were smarter than the average hoe. You asked so many questions. And then you sacked your Peacekeeper dogs on my boys at Carver and I never saw you again. I should have known."

"I was doing my duty," Grace said as a matter of fact. "I did what I had to bring down you and your sick operation. It wasn't personal."

The Bishop waved his arms in exasperation and shucks his long braids back and forth. The deacon said for him: "It was certainly personal when you were acting like you was my main squeeze over them couple of months. I put my other hoes aside for you. I was going to make you my queen. You were to be the Queen of Carver."

Grace said, "Thank you, but no. You know, even I have to sacrifice my ideals to serve a cause greater than myself. Sometimes it's the _little_ things that you have to deal with the most—"

The Bishop mouthed something unfathomable and fired his gun into the air. Martin's people took defensive positions.

The Deacon said: " _Bring you black ass up here now, Grace."_ When she didn't move he repeated what he'd said and added: " _I won't ask you again."_

"Grace isn't going anywhere with you two." Chris said.

"Man, you are the fool who is going to get yourself and these country boys killed. I owe them already. "

"I might," Chris nodded in agreement. "But know this: When I am through counting down from the number ten, that body count that you swear by will begin with _you."_

The Bishop gritted his teeth; his Deacon looked nervous as he said: "My Boys will kill everyone they can, starting with you and Grace."

"No they won't," Chris took five steps forward as to separate him from the others. "You're Deacon and your Choir Boys are cowards. Sure, they have us outnumbered and outgunned but your number superiority is irrelevant because in their heart of hearts _they are cowards._ They serve you, a false god, out of fear not loyalty. The Choir Boys are only dangerous against the old the weak and the defenseless. The Peacekeepers took Carver simply because they weren't afraid of you. My new found friends behind me aren't afraid of you either. All I have to do is count to ten—and then _kill you_ and the rest of your congregation will run. Your types always do."

The Bishop had to shake his Deacon back into the _now._

He said, "You want to take that chance with your life, boy, you want to risk the lives of everyone here?"

"I do. I will. There will be no surrender here. There will be no retreat."

And then the countdown began.
Chapter Twenty One

Be still my soul

-An Atlanta citizen's quote after an earthquake stuck the city in 1906
Angel

**Marta (Near East Lake Station), 26** th **Day**

The Doctor laughed until it hurt.

Roxanne Sanchez fixed her with one of those vicious glares that only she could manage — which wasn't much different from any of her normal gazes actually.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree ran her fingers along her tender side where she'd been stabbed. Roxanne had gotten her alright, but she was still ahead of the game because the wound wasn't going to prove fatal no matter how much the other woman wished it upon her. Angel's semi normal breathing assured her of that. It was superficial at best but just deep enough to be superficial. She was most likely to feel it if she did any running in the near future.

And along with her limp she would be quite the sight.

And that thought set her off on a new round of nearly uncontrollable laughter.

Roxanne looked tired.

"What in the hell could you possibly find funny about any of this?"

"Only a few hours ago, I put a pistol in my mouth," Angel replied and arched a brow at the dark memory. "I wanted to end it all—and not for the first time in my miserable life."

"And what do you feel now, Doctor?"

Angel ran her fingers near her wound again without looking at it.

"I'm hoping that this isn't worse than I think it is. I pray that I'm not already bleeding to death as we speak."

Roxanne fixed her with _that_ stare again, the one that could melt artic ice for a long minute, before breaking it off—with a _laugh_ of her own. Angel thought the other woman had a wondrous laugh, one that lit up all of her dark facial features on like a flashlight against the night. _Is this the one, Christopher,_ she thought about her best friend. _Is this what you had fallen for?_

Angel put her hands on her knees.

"I want to live, Roxanne," Angel said to the other woman who nearly killed her minutes ago. "I want to live. I want the chance to see if I can make things right again."

"Are you sure, Doctor, are you really sure that's what you really want?"

"I do," Angel answered simply and lay back in her seat. The question and answer served as an intermission session between the two of them. _I'll bet my pension that you still want to kill me don't you, Roxanne. Are these the final minutes of my life are going to look like...before you finally fulfill your destiny and kill me?_

"Don't tempt me, Doctor?" Roxanne rubbed a knot growing on her own forehead.

"That's what this is about isn't it?" Angel knew she was disadvantaged in any physical confrontation with this other woman. It was time to challenge her on Angel's own playing field. "If you kill me then all of your pain magically disappears inside the coffin they bury me in."

The Marta stopped at its next preordained location. No one got on board.

Roxanne pointed a finger at Angel and cursed.

"Save the psychobabble for someone who truly gives a damn about it."

Angel cocked a brow.

"It doesn't take any measure of professional training to see that you are hurting inside, Roxanne. You are full of guilt. It's the only thing that makes sense that you once tried to join the very organization that you felt ambushed Maria in the first place."

Roxanne sat back in her own seat and her body seemed to grow limp.

"She made me promise to bring her back."

"Who," Angel got to her feet and stretched, while keeping her distance, "Who made you promise, Roxanne?"

Roxanne made a half turn and looked out of the window into the Atlanta darkness. It had already been a long night. It was the _longest_ night ever. "'Don't let them hurt my baby'" she made me promise. My mother told me that she knew what Maria was doing was wrong—and that's not to mention the whoring and stealing that came before. She told me that the police needed to put her away for a very long time. On the inside she could get treatment. On the inside she could deal with all of the hate she had for all men because of our father leaving us the way that he did. She told me that she wanted her baby to live...despite all of the evil that she'd done, she wanted her baby to live."

Angel nodded in understanding. A painful past was a difficult beast to bury.

"Most mothers would want the same for their children, Roxanne. _Would you want that for me, Mama?_ There is no shame in that."

And when Angel saw that Roxanne Sanchez could fight back the tears no longer... she gave her space, she gave her silence and she gave her the dignity that she knew the other woman would want.

" _I just can't get her voice out of my head. I hear her every day, every night. It is relentless."_

"I'm sorry—"

Roxanne spun back around.

" _Shut up, Angel. I don't need you to say anything. You can't possibly—"_

" _Understand,"_ Angel matched the fury in Roxanne's tone with fire in her own. "Of course your dilemma is your own; we all have our own troubles. But of course I can understand. I can't reach inside of you and pull out your feelings, Roxanne. I _can_ emphasize. You feel that you let your mother down. I killed mine and have relived my father's sad legacy almost like I'm his image in the mirror."

"I didn't know..."

Angel grabbed the other's wrist and pulled her close until they were face to face.

"You need to understand that neither of us is directly responsible for what happened to our loved ones." Angel said to her. "But _I_ am not responsible for what happened to Maria Sanchez either, Roxanne, any more than you are _._ I don't have any reason or motivation to lie to you. But I will ask you—I will _beg_ you to believe me when I say that I had no knowledge that the FBI was planning to ambush and kill your sister."

"And why should I believe you, Doctor?" Roxanne said without anger.

Angel dared to move closer.

"Roxanne, if you didn't know this already I will share it with you: I am a _terrible_ human being. I deserve to be held accountable if not die for the things that I am responsible for with the crisis that this city and our country is facing this hour. The other things that I have done in both my professional and personal life aren't much better. My day of reckoning is coming. Don't you understand, Roxanne, I have nothing to lose anymore by exposing my sins to you, to the world. Most importantly, I have no reason to lie to you about what happened to Marie."

And then Angel released her grip on Roxanne's wrist.

And then the Marta—and the world at large shook beneath them.

Angel was tossed on her butt at the start...she immediately felt the hole in her side split open further. Roxanne screamed—and the sound of it was as terrifying as her laughter was a glorious sound in Angel's ear. Yet, she managed to reach her arms out in front of her face before she crashed and broke the car's glass.

Angel grasped for the nearest hand post and held on with everything that she had. She could faintly see out of the corner of her eye that Roxanne was struggling for survival even more than she was. Angel couldn't help her even if she had wished it.

The next thought she had was to pray that this car wouldn't skip the track and plummet downwards at an incredible velocity.

And then a minute later the earthquake was over.

The Marta—or least this car was thrown on its side. Angel gathered herself, the best way anyone could considering the circumstances, reached out for Roxanne to see if the other woman who wanted her dead mere hours ago, was still alive. She saw movement. She heard grunts, but was happy that she wasn't left alone here in the dark.

After a time Roxanne finally made eye contact. Fear was etched in the other woman's dark eyes. Or was it Angel's own fear only being reflected in the other woman's pupils. Angel reached out for Roxanne's wrist for the second time in minutes, reached her and held her close.

After a moment, Roxanne Sanchez at long last began to cry.

And Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree cried with her.
Louis

**Stone Mountain; Eastern Zone, 26** th **Day**

For now, all was quiet on the eastern front.

All was quiet except for Moses Jackson who was finishing the final verse of his prayer for two of the boys who had perished from events that transpired from the earthquake that happened nearly an hour ago now.

Louis Keaton didn't offer any words in the prayer and kept his distance from Moses and the other six boys he'd put in tremendous jeopardy first by kidnapping them in the first place and now with this botched escape attempt.

The total of them were driving alongside the mountain when the quake struck. Louis had tried to break, but not so hard that it toppled the pickup truck. He'd managed both. The boys in the unsecured bed went flying out of the truck. Louis' last turn caused the truck to land on top of two of the boys killing them instantly.

The God that Louis knew, but had never served, would not have let them suffer.

Now, Louis finally found the strength to move back towards his troops that he was leading. And he was their leader whether he wanted it or not. He was there leader whether _they_ wanted it or not.

He walked up behind his general and planted a firm hand on Moses shoulder. For once the boy did not flinch.

"Thank you, Moses."

"What are you thanking me for?"

"You have turned out to be the leader just like I thought you were. You are the leader that your family thought you were. You weren't named Moses for nothing. He led the children of Israel out of Egypt. You're going to continue helping me lead the rest of these boys back home."

Moses teared up.

"That was a beautiful sermon that you gave for our lost companions. But we have lost a lot of time, but hopefully so have Pandora in their search for us. I believe that we can still reach the interstate—even without a ride. We need to go."

No one moved.

"I can't," The youngest living boy who'd broken his leg in the crash said. The bone was more than a clean break actually; it was likely shattered from kneecap to ankle. "I can't walk any further."

Louis swallowed hard.

"Well, that only means that we will have to take turns carrying you. I'll volunteer to go first. Solders never leave anyone behind. All you have to do is to try. You can't give up."

" _No,"_ The boy cried out. "It hurts to bad. And I'm so tired and hungry too."

"We all are." Another boy said.

"You were told to get to your feet, solider." Louis said sternly.

"We don't want to play solders anymore." A third boy offered. "We want to go home. But I don't think any of us knows the way now." The group of them seemed to be focusing their complaints on Moses. "We're scared."

Moses looked from the boys to Louis back to the boys again.

"We need more time—sir." Moses said partly in urgency, partly in a calm tone. "Can you give us 30 minutes to gather ourselves?"

In thirty minutes we will have returned from which we came. And we will never leave this world to the weak and impotent again.

Louis shuddered with that familiar voice from deep inside of him trying to swim up to the surface once again.

"I don't think I have 30 minutes, Moses."

Moses Jackson must have seen the look in Louis' eye, because he instantly caught the man's meaning. He scooped the boy with the shattered leg up underneath his arm as to take the first shift.

Louis stood and watched it all nearly helpless. Hugh told him to quit this nonsense now. The weakling that was Louis Keaton was had taken these boys as far as he could. He'd fought off Hugh's natural instincts as long as any weakling had any right to. It was over now, finished. He'd failed these boys long before now. Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree and all of her therapy wouldn't save him now. And Serena Tennyson and Pandora's long arm of influence was always reaching out for him. And now even Mother Nature was working against him. The earthquake was devastating. Even if they were to reach the outskirts of downtown who knew the devastation that and obstacles they would face then? He had failed in his final chance to save these boys.

_Give them to us. Give them to_ me, _Louis._

In my last visit, I learned much, Louis. The Dragon Witch has helped me in strengthening my resolve. The next time that I return to your world I will not settle for anything less than eternal life, Louis.

_And in my life,_ you _must be vanquished forever._

It is only a matter of time.

It is not a matter of if but when.

Louis Keaton recovered enough from his living nightmare that he though he saw a movement in some nearby trees. He took a hard longer look and was positive that he saw _something,_ but was unsure of what. Moses Jackson and his younger eyes must have seen it too, because he nearly rammed into Louis with the other boy in tow to escape it.

"Did you see it?" Moses asked him.

"I did, Moses. Get our troops together. We will either leave here now or die here now. Our greatest escape is still to come."

Moses and the others all eased away from the pack of wolves as they were bid and continued towards home.
Chapter Twenty Two

As long as Xavier Prince leads a House in Chains I consider him the most dangerous person in the world. And yet when I think of Serena Tennyson, I fear that this woman will eventually evolve into someone who is potentially far more lethal.

_-An excerpt from Thomas Pepper's bestseller_ Who is the Caretaker?
Roxanne

**Indian Creek, 26** th **Day**

They were both in survival mode.

Roxanne Sanchez tried to get to her feet to no avail. Stubbornly, she gave it a second attempt, got further along than she did the first time, then crashed to the side of the Marta car (which served as the floor now) when she failed to steady herself by putting pressure on her ankle. It was tender. It was maybe even fractured or severely broken.

She bit her lip and watched Angel rise from her own unconsciousness. She cocked a brow and gave her surroundings and their plight in general a once over before rising to her feet. She worked her way over to where Roxanne was and she could see bruised blood caked on the doctor's blouse.

A stab of guilt washed over Roxanne. And yet, feeling the emotion was cool. It meant that all of her humanity hadn't abandoned her yet. Roxanne still found herself angry at Angel, at least a little. But the harshest feelings were subsiding. Thankfully, she still had managed to separate what was right and what was wrong—at least in her own mind.

And this pursuit of the doctor had proven fruitless.

What about Chris? Where is he now? Is he alright?

And to what extent had the earthquake enhance the city's suffering or _alter_ it to one degree or the other. Was there still an active investigation for Atlanta's missing children?

Angel had finally pushed her way over to where Roxanne was sitting,

"Lean all of your weight on me, Roxanne." Angel got her arm around her. "I've got you. I'm not going to let go."

Roxanne grunted and then struggled to her feet again. Once there, she peered back over her shoulder only to see multitudes of other Marta riders from other overturned cars that were in various states of duress. There were obviously dead people among them. Yet, there had to be at least handfuls of them who were injured but would survive if they were treated to adequate medical attention.

"What about those people over there," Roxanne asked Angel. "We can't just leave them here."

She felt the doctor nod.

"We are going to do just that. I'm sorry, Roxanne. We are in no shape to help them—at least in any adequate sense. We've got to concentrate all of our energy and efforts on ourselves right at this moment. If there are any emergency services or responders available they will show up here sooner than later." Roxanne parted her lips in debate. "Come on, we are leaving this car."

Roxanne felt a surge of new anger rising up out of her chest to her temple that she could direct at the doctor...but it quickly passed. _Damn you, Angel, you are right here._ They were blessed enough to be able to escape this car, they weren't in the condition to aid anyone else.

They took one measured step at a time, each seemingly slower and more ponderous than the one that proceeded it. Roxanne's ankle was busted up good alright.

And then she felt a buzzing.

It was her cell phone ringing.

Angel must have felt it too and halted both of their progress, reaching over and then past Roxanne to slide it out of her side hip pocket; maybe it was Chris calling her.

Damn. Angel couldn't reach it before it stopped buzzing. When the doctor showed her the number on the screen Roxanne didn't immediately recognize the phone number that the call had originated from. She snorted while she waited the long minute it usually took for any left message to work its way to voicemail. She had to think a moment or more to remember what her password was and entered it into the phone while Angel held it up for her.

And then both women waited.

" _I will see you suffer before your end,"_ Was all the voice on the message said. It was all that it _needed_ to say. Roxanne felt a cold shiver of fear run through her shoulder blades and down the length of her spine. _Not now, I can't deal with this now. I can't deal with_ him _now._

Roxanne must have seen the look on her face.

"Roxanne," She asked in a gentle voice. "Are you alright? Who was that voice on the phone? He sounded foreign, maybe of South American origin from my distance? Roxanne can you hear me?"

Roxanne surprised both women...by laying her head on Angel's shoulder. They sat on a bench nearby.

Roxanne wasn't sure why she did—she was unsure of most _everything_ now but she told Angel the story of Ricardo Silas, the story of her time in Mexico in its unfiltered entirety. She told Angel how she'd been warned not to pursue the business man's missing girls. She remembered how Ricardo had warned her of the consequences of her actions for the villagers after she rescued them. She told the doctor the story of putting a gun to the girls 'head and threating to shoot them instead of letting them be returned to their corrupt mother.

She told Angel how she would have done anything to survive the moment.

And that her former lover Ricardo had promised to see her suffer before her end.

"Don't beat yourself up, Roxanne." Angel said when the fires of this maddening story had turned to embers at last. "You were desperate and vulnerable. Sometimes people put in such dire situations sometimes do desperate things in return."

Maybe;

And the tears rushed out of Roxanne.

Were these tears the continued sorrow over Maria's death or the first ones she'd ever shed over her own situation in Mexico?

Anyway, she couldn't believe that she was behaving this way—especially in front of Angel, this stranger who she'd grown to hate for so very long.

Was there a power epiphany at work here?

After a time Roxanne asked Angel about Louis Keaton?

"I think that I can still reach the humanity that lives within him. Louis is a troubled soul but he still has a moral base." Angel said. "The persona known as _Hugh_ is partly my responsibility, partly my creation. Well, maybe creation is too strong a term but I think my medication techniques aids in bringing his dominant personality back to the surface."

"Hugh," Roxanne asked in confusion. "You're the first person from Pandora, A House in Chains or the FBI or the media who I have heard refer to Keaton with that alias."

Angel nodded.

"Hugh Keaton is his true self." Angel said to her patiently. "Louis is little more than a persona that he picked up along the way. Louis was someone who was very special to him. I've never been able to extract the entirety of this tale from him in the time I've spent with him. I do know that Hugh reverts back into this recessive personality during various times of stress, and stimulation. To be honest, Roxanne, I'm unsure what it all means on the grand stage. I do know that I have to reach the Hugh persona if those children have any chance at survival. I've screwed up so much. But I know that he is trying to communicate with me. There were crime scenes that Christopher and I were investigating when Atlanta's children first went missing." Angel swallowed deeply. "He may have killed Denise Prince's daughter Erica as well. I'm not sure."

Roxanne had never considered that scenario but she was not privileged to Keaton's file and background the way Angel had.

"Did you tell Chris any of this?"

Angel shook her head.

"I couldn't. I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure that he did."

All of the memories Roxanne had of finding Erica dead in that dumpster back at Carver came rolling back into Roxanne's head. If this Keaton was as potentially vicious in this Hugh persona as Angel believed then he could be good for the deed.

Roxanne made her best effort at standing up once again. The pain in her ankle was terrible but she stood up none the less.

Angel asked her, "What are you doing?"

"We've wasted enough time, Doctor. I've wasted enough of your time. You told me when I first saw you tonight that you were trying to reach a family important to one of the missing boys and I caused you to miss that appointment. Now, you need to find this Keaton fellow and help save those remaining children and I'm holding you up from that as well. I've wasted enough of your time. We need to get along with the business of finding those boys."

"And we'll waste even more time with me dragging you along on a busted ankle, Roxanne."

"Surely you are not suggesting that you should leave me behind?"

Angel pulled out Roxanne's gun. At some point in the conversation and the closeness, the doctor had lifted the weapon off of her without her even missing it.

"I'm so sorry for this, Roxanne," Angel said. She never pointed the gun directly at her, but she made sure that Roxanne could see that she possessed it. "I am suggesting just that. I need to make things right. Like I said before, I'm sure emergency responders are already headed here, but I promise that I'll send any help I come across to you and the rest of the victims here at this station. I know that ankle hurts like hell but otherwise you're alright. And you're not under any immediate threat of any kind here."

Roxanne wanted to be angry with Angel, especially when the woman began to back away from her. It marked the second time tonight that the barrel of her own gun was put in her face by a civilian. That was unacceptable in her eyes. She was supposed to be better trained than that. It was more than apparent that her fear and anger were overriding emotions that clouded the rest of her judgements.

"The only promise that I want you to make me is that you will tell Chris what you believe, Angel."

"How can I? How can I tell my best friend that my training may have set Louis Keaton off on his latest kidnapping and molesting venture? "

"You have to, Angel. Don't let him find out any other way. If Keaton or anyone else associated with Serena Tennyson and Pandora killed his stepdaughter Eric Lovings, Chris should hear it from you first."

"I know," Angel said with a blank look on her pale face. "Like I said, I've screwed this up so badly already."

"Don't let him find out any other way, Angel." Roxanne said as she sat herself on the ground, offered her cell phone to Angel and resigned to the fact that she might be there for hours to come. And since she had her _own_ secrets to keep as well—the fact that Angel's husband Seth was with her only hours ago—the sooner Angel left her, the better. "Don't,"

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree nodded silently and disappeared into Atlanta's night.

An hour later Roxanne lay down in the dirt; she had no cell phone, no gun, and no chance of defending herself if and _when_ he found her.

Roxanne broke down in tears once again.

She called Chris Prince out loud by name but he failed to answer her back. Was he even alive? He wished he was with her right now.

Every shadow frightened her.

Every movement startled her.

And Ricardo Silas was coming soon to watch her suffer before her end.

He might as well come right now
Chris

**Piedmont Park Vicinity, 26** th **Day**

"Somebody shoot this bastard,"

Special Agent Christopher Prince heard what the Deacon said, but continued his march towards Deacon and the Choir Boys' leader the Bishop. He had finished his countdown with a shot that everyone involved in this standoff knew was an intentional miss wide enough to miss the Bishop's skull, but close enough to get his full attention. Chris could feel the tension from Martin's clan behind him. He had deduced that the others weren't just following him they were _family._ Martin's family had to be unsure of what they were seeing. Why should they believe in _him_ especially after walking on him and Blue had guns locked on each other at the beginning of this?

_Tabitha,_ he remembered his partner lying on the ground nearby after his gun discharged as the earthquake struck the city unexpectedly. _It was an accident,_ he kept telling himself. _It was a damned_ preventable _accident._

But he had one problem to deal with at a time.

Since the Choir Boys had showed up on the scene something in him had changed. _Or perhaps they fully manifested themselves._ Perhaps it had started when the FBI had relieved him of duty after Lucy Burgess had brought the spotlight on a very dark period of his life? Perhaps it began when Serena Tennyson exposed him to the truth... _all_ of the truths about his father Isaac Prince. Or perhaps it was commenced when he held his dying brother Xavier in his arms? Anyway, he couldn't identify what _it_ was. A transformation was taking place. Chris couldn't stop it. He wouldn't stop it.

A dying man had nothing to lose.

"Ain't this something, just look at us, Bishop?" Chris said, continuing his methodical approach with his gun drawn on the two men. "I want you to understand how pathetic we are."

"What are you talking about, boy?" The Deacon said for the Bishop. How the man translated for his muted leader was beyond Chris understanding—or caring at this point. "I know that you need to back the hell up."

Chris looked back at Martin's clan for a second.

"No wonder white folk fear our kind, our very presence. Look at you, Bishop. Look at how you are dressed. Look at the gold teeth and the tats and the baggy pants. You are a disgrace to the mother that births you."

"They don't dictate what I wear," Deacon said for the Bishop. " _You are fucking crazy, man. Why doesn't someone put this bastard out of all our miseries right now? Somebody_ shoot _him._ "

Chris finally stopped in his tracks.

"You're right, Bishop." He said in a voice that was eerily calm and civilized. "They don't dictate what we wear, how we talk, what we do with our lives. Yet, too often our people grasp ideals and ideas that the rest of society questions as a way of embracing our so called blackness. A man once said that we see the right in the wrong and the wrong in the right. I believe that to be true. Look at you, Bishop. The baggy pants and the tattoos originated from prison garb. Is that what we want our young people to aspire to look like—escaped prisoners?"

Bishop actually tried to mumble something through the injury that had incapacitated his means.

Deacon seemed to struggle with this translation. He searched his leader's face long and hard before speaking again.

"I...I guess it's our heritage." Deacon finally said. "I don't know. I _do_ know that I didn't come here for a public service announcement or history lesson from you. I want Grace Edwards. I want payment for the lives that white man and his redneck brood took from me. You got real spirit there, boy, real spirit. I'm going to let you walk away from this if you're smart enough to hand them over to me and just walk away."

"No, it's far from being that simple, my brother." Chris said. "Grace Edwards is a little busy right now. She's not going anywhere with you. And in the 30 minutes that I've known Mr. Martin, I can tell you that he's not giving any of his people to you either."

"Give me—"

" _No,"_ Chris answered in a tone that would brook no further argument. "You have only one choice here, my _brother_ ; you are going turn and walk away from her or you—and your _Deacon_ is going to die here, tonight, right where you are standing right now."

" _Boy, I was right, you are crazy."_

"I am far from it, Bishop. I _am sick_ in every way a man can be sick. I'm sick to death of young brothers like yourself embracing everything that you perceive that white people hate. I am sick of more black men your age serving prison sentences than being enrolled in college. I'm sick of the nightly shootings and other violence. Mostly though, I'm sick of good men like my brother Xavier Prince who died to make this world better for your tired trifling black ass."

"I don't care." The Deacon said for his Bishop. "I'm trying to get mine. It's every man for himself in this world."

Chris shook his head in exasperation.

"Yea, I guess you're right. And that might be the saddest part."

"What have you done? What are _you_ doing?" The Deacon asked him. "Just because you wear a badge don't mean anything."

"You're right again," Chris said. "In this role I've probably done little more than you have to further the cause of people of color. I'm one of those people whose taken their success—and there money to the suburbs. When I'm off duty I was one of the ones who pretended that what goes on in our communities that I left behind doesn't affect me personally. All of the drugs, all of the suffering, all of the murder fade into oblivion while I move on to a new day."

Chris raised his weapon.

"Look, _man_ ," The Deacon said with a trembling voice. "I recognize you now. You're Chris Prince from the FBI. I... _he_ didn't kill your step daughter."

"Of course you did, Bishop."

"She dissed _him_ just like that bitch over there, Grace. He wanted to kill her. He would have but someone beat him to it. I swear it. We found out shortly after that private dick your ex-wife hired found your step daughter in that dumpster in what the Peacekeepers left of Carver."

"I...I believe you."

And Chris Prince spun around and showed both of them his back.

The Bishop grunted, nearly incensed.

The Deacon said: "Oh, you screwed up now, _boy_. Somebody shoot this mother—"

Chris twisted back around and squeezed off a round with the speed and precision that no one, including himself, would have thought imaginable that tore into the Bishop's skull. He mustered a second and third shot while Martin's people got the memo and targeted the Choir Boys—picking them off one by one.

When Chris looked again, there were only three Choir boys still standing. At least two of Martin's men were wounded and didn't look well.

"I want you to remember back when I told your Bishop that I was sick." Chris told the last of the Choir Boys. "I am, as much as your leader was. You are still armed so I guess that makes you dangerous in the immediate sense. Perhaps one or more of you will fire off a shot that kills me, that eases my pain. Dying tonight instead of painfully down the road may be a mercy. I really did believe the Deacon when he said that your people didn't kill Erica Lovings. But you are responsible for scores of deaths and destruction and deserved the death penalty that the Peacekeepers and now... _I_ have served on you. The atonement for your sins has been paid. You three can have a stay of execution but hey it's been a strange night already. Maybe you three will continue to cheat death but it is my advice that you throw down your arms and walk away. You should walk away and live."

They threw down their weapons quickly and leave the scene.

Special Agent Christopher Prince holstered his as well and walked to the spot where Tabitha Blue was still lying.

He praised God that she has a pulse, however faint.

"Who will help me get my partner to the hospital?" Chris asked. "You people have heard me; I'm dying of a type of stomach cancer that killed my mother as well. I'm dying but my partner doesn't have to." Chris said through the tears that were streaming down his face.
Serena

**Fulton County-Cobb County Border, 26** th **Day**

"Tell me your name, sir."

The man, whose voice was the buzzing in a hornets nest, shifted his beady eyes back and forth before they landed on Serena Tennyson at last. At least a dozen other Pandora Agents were mulling about the darkened alley avoiding eye contact with her as well. Today she wore the guise of Oracle, the hard and unforgiving field leader that existed before her near assault at the end of Operation Deliverance. Only Danielle Rohm—Shooter—dared to maintain eye contact with her now. And Serena could not decide if the petite woman dressed in black's gaze was one locked in fascination or contempt.

"Penrose," The man's thick mustache rose and fell as he spoke. "My name is Charlie Penrose."

"Very good then," Serena locked her hands behind her back and circled Penrose. "Tell me, Operative Penrose, in what capacity did you serve your country before you became enlightened and recruited by Pandora."

Penrose looked from Serena to his immediate supervisor, Alexander Bolton for any indication of support from the suntanned and fit younger man, licked his lips and watched Serena complete another circle around him.

"Look, Oracle, I—"

Serena hardened her gaze further and planted her nose and lips an inch from Penrose's right ear.

"I asked you a _fucking_ question, operative," Such vulgarities were normally beneath Serena, but this was not just an exercise in discipline but in appearance. Reports were coming in from many of her field supervisors that belief, courage and _hope_ were fading—especially after the destruction and death that had touched so many of her people after the earthquake. "I asked you a question and I want a _fucking_ answer to that question an hour ago."

She heard Penrose swallow.

"I was a contracted agent for the ATF. In fact, now that I think of it, I would have been employed by them ten years late next month."

Serena grinned...and it startled Penrose. _Good._

"You would have served them ten years you say?"

"Yes, Oracle, ten years,"

"Well then, to the matter at hand. Why did you abandon your post?"

She heard Penrose swallow again.

"It was about the earthquake of course," Serena could see sweat building on his brow and on his thick mustache. "Before our last operation began I moved my family out of Metro Atlanta, you know, expecting the worse in violence and rioting in the city after we passed the Zero Hour."

"Go on,"

"Well, ma'am, when the initial reports about the earthquakes started filing in and we learned that the epicenter was 20 to 25 miles east of the city...well...I panicked. That was the same general area where I sent Lizzy—my wife and my boys towards. My in-laws retired in an area near Athens." Penrose seemed to shrink a little and some of the sting went out of his voice. "I haven't heard a hair from them since the quake struck; I admit that the situation has shaken me up pretty badly, it's been difficult to concentrate on anything else since. I needed to know if my family made it. I left here and drove until I found them _alive_ at last."

"It shook you up; of course it shook you up, Operative Penrose." Serena said, echoing the man's earlier statement. She glanced back only at the woman dressed all in black only interested in her reaction to all this...and interested in her _words._ "Shooter, tell Operative Penrose what transpired during his absence from his post."

Rohm rolled her eyes and stepped up to the center of the group and planted her small but lethal hands behind the small of her back in as neutral a stance as the younger woman could muster.

"The Atlanta Police Department had split into smaller independent battalions as they've struggled with their own breaches of discipline and defections during events in the city over the past 24 to 48 hours. One of these battalions, a group who called themselves Blackstreet infiltrated a position that our people held six miles from here. Operative Penrose was by far our most senior and most experienced man in the area of combat. The others fought valiantly but were overrun and were forced to withdraw from this vital strategic holding."

"With all of the earthquake damage between here and there the obstructions caused my roundtrip to take far longer than I would have anticipated. I knew that zone was important to Pandora, Oracle. I know that it was important to _you_ —"

"Operative Penrose," Serena interrupted him.

"It is my opinion that we wouldn't have held the zone even if I—"

" _Operative Penrose,"_ Serena said in a voice that ran both hot _and_ cold. "You abandoned your post. You allowed an enemy combatant to make a successful incursion into Pandora held territory; a zone that cost us valuable lives and resources to claim and then to hold."

Penrose's mustache quivered as his hidden lip beneath muttered something incomprehensible. Serena thought she saw tears in his eyes.

"I didn't do this on my own authority, Serena...Oracle. Operative Bolton gave me permission." Penrose peered over to where his suntanned superior went a shade of white. "You'll back me up on this part right, buddy? I got permission. I drove back as quickly as the conditions allowed me to. _Please, Serena,_ forgive me for what happened to my guys while I was gone. We lost good people. _I_ lost good friends."

"Operative Penrose are you aware of the penalty for desertion?"

" _Desertion,"_ Penrose uttered the word as if it were a curse as his bushy eyebrows shot up.

"We are in a state of war, Operative. What you did amounted to an act of treason against our cause—against me. Treason is punishable by death is it not?"

All of the life went out of Penrose as if his execution had already been commenced and all that was left behind were his bones. Bolton shifted his weight as if he needed to pee. Rohm folded one arm over the other and licked her black lip stick.

"My God, what kind of people are you?" Penrose asked them one and all and then rested his scorching gaze on Serena. "What kind of woman are you?"

Serena answered only be planting her hands on her lean hips.

"I am the woman who is commanding the most lethal, efficient, counter terrorist unit that this country—that the _world_ has ever seen, mister. I have been tasked with protecting this country's way of life and values that you and I both enjoy. I expect nothing less than the best efforts from my subordinates in these urgent matters of state. Do you agree that Operative Bolton was your direct superior in this case?"

"What?"

Serena sneered as she tapped a toe in exaggerated inpatients. The look of pure dread in Penrose's eye, the anxiety of the other operatives and even the hint of anxiety in Danielle Rohm's face was _exactly_ the effect this theatrical exercise was meant to accomplish.

"Are you deaf as well as blind to your incompetence? " Serena asked, and jerked a long manicured index fingernail into the chest of Operative Penrose until she knew that it hurt. "Is Operative Bolton your direct supervisor? Did this man give you permission to leave the city in search of your family?"

" _Yes,"_ Penrose broke down with tears. "Yes, he is. Tell her Alex. Tell her that everything was on the up and up. Tell her, please. I don't want to die—not _now—_ not after going through so much to learn what happened to my family. _Tell her_ what she wants to know, Alex."

"Mistress Tennyson," Bolton cleared his throat. "If I could be allowed to speak on Operative Penrose's behalf—I know this man to be of high character—

Serena interrupted Bolton.

"Well, of course he is, Operative Bolton. He would not be a member of my team if he were not." Serena's tone softened for now. She never took her eye off of Penrose, focusing on his thick mustache but spoke to Bolton. "I want you to step forward."

"Yes, Oracle,"

Bolton arrived in six steps.

"I want you to hand me your side arm."

"Sorry...I don't understand."

"Operative Alexander Bolton, you will hand me your sidearm, mister and you will do so immediately." Serena said while still eyeing Penrose's mustache.

"He acted under my consent, Oracle," Bolton said. "Please forgive him—"

"I asked for you weapon, Operative Bolton, not for your _opinion—_ and I will ask you for your sidearm only once more."

Bolton handed it butt first.

Serena examined it quickly, checked the magazine's clip for ammunition, released the safety and points the barrel at Operative Penrose at last.

Bolton gasped in horror.

Rohm unfolds her arms.

Serena watched the other Operatives shift in their stance while one female in the groups turns away from what she fears are the final seconds of Penrose's life.

And then Serena chooses a new target—Operative _Bolton—_ and squeezes the trigger at point blank range between the young man's eyes.

Operative Alexander Bolton's suntanned body is long dead before he ever hits the pavement.

Serena waited a heartbeat before speaking further, her theatrics nearing its end.

"Family is certainly crucial, Operative Penrose, especially in light of the events that have shined such a negative light on all of us in the past few days." Serena said and even squeezed Penrose's trembling shoulder. "However, Pandora—everyone here—is your family as well. By the end of this we may your only family left. The fault in the abandonment of your post is not yours, Operative Penrose that is why _you_ still live. Operative Bolton was not killed because he erred in letting you pursuit the whereabouts of your family. Alexander was _permanently_ relieved of duty because he failed to commit someone with equal experience in your place while you were away."

"Yes, Oracle," Penrose tried to steady his voice. "I understand."

"Very well then; I want you to assume Bolton's command and select a qualified candidate to serve Pandora in your own post and then I want you to retake our zone from Blackstreet."

Penrose pointed a thumb as his own chest.

"Me,"

"Operative Penrose," Serena softened her voice until she sounded as if she were another person. This wasn't theatrics any longer. This was real. "I regret to inform you that it has come to my knowledge that your wife, your children and your in-laws were all killed when one of the aftershocks leveled that community just east of Athens where your family was." Serena allowed Penrose to examine the official documents that Rohm had handed him while she spoke. "Minutes ago I spoke of Pandora as potentially your only family. You can honor your family—you can honor _us_ by continuing to perform your duties to the best of your abilities."

Penrose's beady eyes brightened for the first time since this entire episode began. He wiped the snot that had leaked into his mustache on his sleeve.

"I need you to be a leader now. I need you to retake what's ours. Peachtree Street served as a major listening post between our current position and the heart of Midtown Atlanta. We are currently blind in that respective and I don't like being blind, Operative Penrose."

"I understand." Penrose said and seemed to find his footing again. "And I _will_ retake that zone. You have my word on that."

Ten minutes later after the group had disbanded, Serena heard Rohm calling her by that particular name as she strolled down the other end of the street. The wind was howling and whipped both women's hair into an unkempt frenzy.

Serena had been walking towards a mobile weapons depot to pick up two guns from its wide and varied arsenal. She slowed her long strides just enough for the younger woman to catch up to her.

Danielle Rohm struggled to match her pace and Serena could feel Shooter looking up at her.

"You have a query for me, Rohm?"

"More of an observation perhaps," Rohm replied after a prolonged thought. And then she did something unexpected...Danielle Rohm reached out and squeezed Serena's arm at the elbow and spun her around until the two women faced each other. Rohm glanced down the street they had been facing and then to the one behind them and then dismissed the driver of the mobile weapons carrier.

Any anger or resentment that the younger woman had experienced after Serena's proclamation of her leading role in the Peacekeeper's murder of James Carter and the maiming of the man's wife years ago was subsiding.

Serena softened her stance as well as not to appear unnecessarily confrontational. She would admit to no one—not even Rohm—that the confrontation with Penrose and Bolton had been emotionally draining. Serena wasn't completely comfortable with all of the emotions running through her over the past weeks but somehow it felt _right_ somehow to need this woman's approval somehow.

Perhaps Rohm was _her_ family.

"Look, I can't say whether I completely agree with how you handled the James Carter or this Bolton situation or not. But I can save that I disagree with your decision since that you should be leading this assault _yourself_ proves nothing. Blackstreet would have fortified their hold on that zone by now. They have more than Pandora to worry about. We also don't know if any of the other battalions of APD officers have joined them. Even if even one of them did it would make their stronghold nearly invulnerable to any incursion we could muster."

"You're knowledge of tactics and military strategy never fails to astound me, Rohm. You are quite the student of combat."

Rohm ignored that.

"I'm asking you to stay behind, Serena. I'm asking you not to do this."

"My dear, Rohm, are you actually trying to protect me."

"I am. You spoke about family earlier. You are the mother; you are the father of this family especially with Raymond Rice no longer amongst us. If you should fall..." Rohm let her voice trail off while she still had strength in it.

Serena looked up and glared into the smoky haze and the nothingness that existed well beyond it.

"I will, as you say, _fall,_ Rohm." Serena would not allow herself to look at Rohm. She thought neither of them possessed the strength to engage in such an emotional stare down. "I've seen it in the flames, Rohm. I've looked into the fire and saw my reflection there. But I do understand that my end is not here, it will be soon, but not now. I may not deserve your trust, Rohm, but I need it unconditionally."

Serena smiled at Rohm and resumed her march towards the mobile weapons unit when the younger woman halted Serena's progress once again.

Rohm said: "There is something dark about to happen to you...to me...to _all_ of us who have been involved in this since the introduction of the 411 Campaign. I can feel it, Serena."

"Have you peeking into my flames, Rohm?"

"I'm serious, Serena." Rohm said. "And this comes from someone like Raymond Rice who once told you that he did not believe in your flames. I don't believe in them or you're Dragon. I _do_ believe in you, Serena. I always have. And I'm asking you—I'm begging you to stay behind. Nothing good comes from you going any further with your plan. I can _feel_ it, Serena."

Serena touched Rohm's face.

"I'm sorry, Danielle but I have to. I listen to Dragon within those flames. And the flames tell have instructed me to walk this path. I must obey. There is something within that zone that I was meant to see."

The battle finally turned in Pandora's favor 45 minutes into it. The majority of the operatives who had led the initial incursion with Penrose had been killed in the first half hour including Penrose himself. Still, the man had served his family, both old and new, with distinction and valor as his men had taken scores of Blackstreet with them into eternity. More importantly, Penrose's men had eliminated a handful of snipers that had been casing two buildings from above. Rohm had been wrong—thankfully—about other APD battalions' merging with this one. In fact, Serena was more than happy to tell Shooter that they'd overestimated their enemy's numbers and organizational capacity period.

Or perhaps they were more effective as the aggressor where they could use emotion and sense of purpose to drive an enemy out...but lacked the direction and aptitude to wage a defensive campaign against the likes of Pandora.

But finishing what they had started wouldn't be easy.

Serena's forces had met resistance from an unexpected source: A group of civilians who had called themselves the Book Worms. Their numbers were around 20 and they were former librarians who had banded together to defend the building and street from any and all comers. They were far from efficient with their attack and disorganized and lacked proper training. But Serena admired their gall and their courage.

It was an honor to order her people to kill them all.

By the time they'd reached the zone of Peachtree, Serena's people were tired and they had a limited amount of ammunition and supplies. And yet, not only was Blackstreet surprised at Pandora's initial counter attack, they were caught completely by surprise when Serena's supportive cell came out firing with all guns.

And then Serena made the most difficult order of them all.

Xavier Prince, the Circle and the Peacekeepers had taught Serena and her Pandora associates a valuable lesson during their outlandish missions in the operation that they had called Scar.

They had taught Serena that there were _no_ lines that were beyond not being crossed in the effort to win a war.

And if Xavier's people could kill civilians in unpresented numbers using an unpresented and crude manner—

She could surely order her people to respond in kind.

So three of your junior operatives sprinted towards Blackstreet's final stronghold of nearly 12 to 15 officers and ignited the explosives on their chest as both men and structures exploded in a fiery hell storm worthy of Serena's Dragon.

Serena smile faded as soon as she looked behind her.

Danielle Rohm had been shot.

Serena fired off two or three more rounds as Blackstreet stragglers who had tried to outflank her people from the rear. Oracle was more frantic than she would have ever thought as she rushed over to the area where Shooter was nearly flat on her back.

She did calm her breathing with some effort when she arrived to where the woman in black was lying.

Honestly, after a second and then a third glance, Rohm looked to have suffered more than a flesh wound in her side as the bullet had went in and then immediately had passed through and out of her. When Rohm had actually mouthed the words that she was okay it caused Serena to breathe even easier. The man who had taken over for Penrose sprinted over to where the two women were and asked for permission to retake the building that would serve as a Pandora command center for as long as they held this zone. Serena happily gave him that order.

Twenty more minutes and this battle was all over.

Serena Tennyson commanded Rohm to seek medical attention for her wounds no matter how minor she thought they were, as well as the other dozen or so operatives that had various injuries like the one Rohm had suffered through to more life threating ones.

Then Serena walked with a hand full of her victorious operatives inside their old new home to inventory what weapons and information that the APD battalion had left behind.

They had completed their mission.

They had retaken the zone.

She gave her next command: She instructed two operatives to begin to access the damage to the computers that they'd set up and to get the communications array operational once again to that they could get back in contact with other Pandora cells throughout the city and beyond. Louis Keaton's whereabouts was the obvious top priority. She wanted to know if he and those boys had cleared the mountain retreat or not.

Again, Pandora had learned from the Circles 'deviousness. They had released their own suicide agents into the field. The gloves had indeed come off.

But.

But if she thought all was lost and she were to unleash the fiery inferno upon the city...Oracle's vision of the Whirlwind, Serena wanted to be absolutely certain that events had left her with no other choice—

And then Serena heard Rohm screams above the cries many others.

Serena ran out of the building as fast as her long legs would carry her.

And then she saw it.

It looked as if an entire acre of land had disappeared that was a part of historic Peachtree street as the earth had opened up—and a gigantic sinkhole had taken its place.

She carefully but quickly worked her way to the top of it ignoring the pleas from her subordinates not to venture down below.

Serena didn't lower herself down...what she saw below her...told her that it was far too late to help anyone who'd fallen into the sinkhole.

Danielle Rohm's body was torn, twisted and broken unlike any human body Serena Tennyson had ever seen before.

Serena leaned over the edge just enough so she could wipe the dirt and tears from Shooter's eyes.

Those eyes...Danielle Rohm's nearly lifeless eyes fixed themselves on Serena above her.

Serena told her stupidly that it was all okay; she told her that she would be okay. She didn't bother checking on the other operatives whose bodies were just as torn, twisted and broken as Rohm's. Most of their fates were already sealed. Rohm lived on. For a few seconds that she had left, Rohm lived on.

Rohm reached her hand up until Serena leaned over further and grasped it with her own.

Danielle Rohm, the Shooter, the woman who all dressed in black could only whisper what she meant to say.

She told Serena something that she would always remember.

And then she told her something that she would never forget.

And then the young woman died a painful, agonizing death.

And Serena Tennyson found herself orphaned once again.
Seth

**Georgia Dome (Triage Center); Northside Avenue (Lot B), 26** th **Day**

The Georgia Dome's Westside Club Section had served at a triage center of operations even before the earthquake had hit the city.

It wasn't designed for this. It was massively understaffed and the refugees kept pouring in not only from Metro Atlanta, but from rural Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama in search of medical attention, food, water, and a place of safe refuge.

It would have to do until something like that could be provided.

Dr. Seth Dupree was more than thrilled to be helping others inside its walls however. It had seemed as if it had been forever since he'd what he'd actually been trained to do—surgery.

It wasn't actually. He'd performed two minor and one major procedure with the late Denise Prince assisting during the Carver mess. He had to laugh inwardly; he thought at that time that the Peacekeepers siege on that housing project had been the single biggest farce of his life.

Oh how much of the world—and his opinion of _it_ —had changed since then.

He looked at the clock. He'd been working for what...four procedures and 12 hours straight since he'd found his way here via one of the few operating Marta's in the city. Two other members of his original team had been killed in separate incidents since the Zero Hour's inception. A stray bullet had taken one; the after effect of the earthquake had claimed the other. And yet, these people who he'd never worked with now were excellent and professional and dedicated to their craft despite the many different things that had befallen them and their families over the past days.

The emergency lights flickered off and then on again.

"Teresa," Seth hoped that was the name of the young woman who smelled of body wash. "Get that electrical crew up here again. We can't risk having these power fluctuations', especially right now."

"I did earlier, Doctor, just before—"

"Do it again, _please; w_ e either need consistent lighting from the primary systems that they set up or they need to concentrate their efforts on getting the damned battery backups going. I know that this triage center was originally designed to function from surface level. I know that our little groundbreaking event has made that design less than palpable. We've got to make what we have work for us. If I remember in our training that they should have designed the electrical systems to bypass primary conduits and piggyback directly off of the Georgia Dome's secondary power grid." He stopped the surgery and talking a moment to catch his breath. "We should have at least three more hours before all these primary systems shut themselves down. That increases the risk to what we are doing here. I'm not going to lose any patients because of loss of power at a critical juncture."

"Alright, Doctor, I'll head right over to their holding area."

"Good, you do that. And Teresa," Seth replied as she turned around with the door handle in her hand.

"Tell them not to have me to have to come up there. I can be a very dangerous man when I want to be."

Seth's sly attempt at humor brought a smile to the young woman's face. Two other nurses laughed out loud and Seth's one moment of lightheartedness had relieved much of the tension in the room that he himself probably was responsible for creating.

And yet the chemical release that laughter had provided had only served to tire him out further.

He shook off his weariness and threw all of his concentration into his work. He managed to relax his mind while working his fingers. He allowed his experience and his years of training to lead him where he needed to go. This patient—he glanced at her chart again—Tabitha Blue needed his best efforts this afternoon. The bullet had only grazed an area of her skull lined with major tissue, but missed the subsection that housed her brain. A gunshot to the head was _never_ good, but this was a workable situation. It would be a slow physical recovery for Ms. Blue. She might suffer some headaches and there would be bouts of memory loss but she would survive.

The Gray Man just needed the damned lights to stay on—and for him not to make any mistakes.

"Doctor Dupree," One of the two doctors who had found the humor in his words earlier said. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," He said a little too quickly and instantly regretted it. He bridged the awkward silence by instructing her to hand him the scalpel to the far left. He made an incision that his medical tutors of long ago would have pleased with.

"No, you're not," Dr. Parker, his number one assistant said. He was a former lunch partner of Denise Prince and whether through personal or professional jealously, hadn't treated Seth with much affection during their training together. "You've been at this since you arrived—from nowhere—12 hours ago. You look like hell."

"I'm fine," Seth replied again, stopping long enough to raise the bloody instrument towards the heavy set doctor. "You do, however, have the authority to relieve me of my duties by the rules we all agreed upon when we signed on to serve this state in matters such as this. But you wouldn't start any shit like that—not now would you, Doctor?"

Parker chose not to pursue any of those avenues just now.

They completed the work on Tabitha Blue 30 minutes later. Teresa had returned from her errand just in time to inform Seth and Dr. Parker that this patient had two people, who she didn't think were her relatives, waiting from a report from them on the next floor.

Teresa's words got Seth's attention. Almost half of the patients at the triage center being treated for major trauma were solo acts who had been separated from loved ones by countless circumstances. This was a striking change from what he'd grown used to in his time here. He actually looked forward to speaking to who had accompanied Ms. Blue here.

_It feels good to be a surgeon again...it feels good to be_ me _again._ He had survived a terrifying night that he would have never given himself a chance of surviving before it began. He had proven himself worthy of life. He had proven himself worthy of _living._

But he was _good_ at this. And what he was superior at was still in high demand after all of the madness perpetrated by equally as mad men over the past hours and days.

And yet, when Seth saw the party who had escorted Tabitha Blue to this place, he knew that the madness had followed him here.

"Let me see the chart again, Teresa," Seth said, without looking back at the woman who trailed close behind him. He only had eyes for Special Agent Christopher Prince and a slim black woman who was seated next to him on a comforter. "The patients name full title was _Special Agent_ Tabitha Blue of the FBI." He said for his own ears more than the others standing near him.

The Gray man left Teresa and Dr. Parker where they were standing and angled his way towards where Chris and this stranger to him were seated. _I'm not prepared to deal with you right now, Agent Prince._ He saw Denise Prince throw herself out of her apartment's window to her death as he approached Chris. He knew that he wasn't prepared to deal with a potentially grieving ex-husband...especially one who didn't know what _he_ knew about his ex-wife's final thoughts and words before she died.

And yet, Chris had knowledge of what came in the hour or so before that. What or perhaps _who_ did Denise see inside of Agent Prince's motel room that started her down that path to self-destruction?

Seth took a deep breath as the two of them rose as he stopped next to where they had been previously been sitting.

As Chris rose to his full height he said: "Hello, Doctor, thank you for seeing us...how is Tabitha?" He had achieved full recognition of the other man. "Seth? Dr. Seth Dupree is that you? What are you doing here?"

"It's good to see you again as well, Chris." Seth stuck his hand out and let Chris give it a squeeze. "Sit down."

Chris flashed a look of dread.

"Tabitha isn't—"

"No," Seth shook his head and visibly saw the FBI Special Agent exhale visibly. Something else brightened on his dark face, something that Seth couldn't immediately place. He saw Seth searching for an answer as well and he quickly introduced the younger woman wearing the tight braids in her hair as Grace—no last name. And since either one of the men were offering explanations Seth moved on to why he originally came up here. "Tabitha is stabilizing. Even as we speak she is recovering."

After Seth gave Agent Prince his immediate and long term prognosis of his patient he said: "She's out of whatever fight you two are involved in, Chris. Your partner has a long recovery ahead of her, but I am very optimistic. In the short time we spent together I can tell that she is very strong and very stubborn."

Chris turned on a sheepish smile.

"You don't know the half of it, Doc."

The three of them sat in an awkward silence while the Georgia Dome's lights flickered off and on again. Seth knew that he needed to get back to the business of his other patients. Agent Chris Prince had already turned on his professional demeanor. He had transformed into full investigator mode now: The Gray Man could see the other man examining every blink of his eye, every movement of his lip searching for clues to something hidden.

The woman—Grace—kept checking her watch and suddenly couldn't sit still. Seth couldn't work out if she worked for the bureau or one of its many subsidiaries. She carried herself in a professional manner even as the fatigue showing beneath her eyes wore her down. For and instant—a small instant—Seth thought them to be lovers...but their chemistry wasn't giving off that type of vibe.

And in speaking of lovers—

"Where is Angel, Chris?" Seth asked, wondering where his beloved was and if Roxanne Sanchez had made good on her threats towards his wife. "Have you heard from her in the past few hours?"

Chris shoulders dropped a little.

"It's been a great deal of hours ago...before the Zero Hour and certainly before the quake hit." Chris admitted to him. "I don't know where Angel is, Seth, _no_ one does."

"What in the hell do you mean by _no_ one does?"

Grace took the opportunity to excuse herself and offered to bring the two of them some coffee after she found and had one of her own. Chris nodded in agreement at her suggestion without lifting his eyes off of the doctor to watch her leave.

Both men stopped speaking for a second as medical personnel rushed past where they were seated with another patient who looked to have numerous injuries to his lower extremities. Seth found a clock on the nearby wall and let his gaze hand there for a second so that the FBI Agent understood that he didn't have an infinite amount of time to chat.

"I've only heard this information second hand, Seth. Things didn't end well between your wife and the bureau. Sheridan—my boss left a single agent responsible for keeping her put during the duration of this investigation into Atlanta's missing children. She escaped him. No one knows where she went off to or why she made her escape. No one has seen a trace of her since."

"That means that she could be anywhere in the city."

"Well, the FBI has few resources to commit to finding her—especially in light of everything that has happened since. They are struggling with communications along with everything else. And now reports are surfacing about some super storm moving into the area over the next few hours to add misery to everything else."

Seth had noted that the wind had picked up substantially in the past few hours before the shelter of the Georgia Dome had at least taken that danger away. _A super storm, you say, what else in the hell can wrong here?_ Seth got up and walked to one of the giant windows to see it for himself. Three men were fighting against that very wind while they were setting up a tent outside in the parking lot. Another man was chasing down some packaged medical supplies that had blown away as he gave chase.

"I haven't spoken to her either," Seth said, almost defensively. "She hasn't answered her cell in ages."

"It's funny how she never mentioned to me once that you were in town. In fact she seemed hell bent on avoiding you all together."

"She never knew that I was here." Seth hoped to quell the investigator's instincts with quick and precise answers. "We had a knock down drag out fight just after your man Sheridan recruited her. Look, Chris, I've trained with this trauma unit for situations like this one over the past few years. I needed to do something when I suddenly found a lot of time on my hand. I also wanted to be closer to my wife if this situation between Pandora and a House in Chains deteriorated further. It looks as if I made the right choice."

Agent Prince was nodding.

"I'm sure that this unit benefited greatly from having you aboard, Seth. I need to look no further than you saving my partner's life as evidence of that."

Seth believed that the FBI Agent was being honest with what he was saying, but there was something just underneath the surface of his words that meant a great deal more.

"I hope so, Chris. I hope so."

"And speaking of this specialized unit of yours, Denise spoke to me about all of your training and expertise; I remember her saying that you were more than a fine surgeon. She said that you had leadership qualities that were unmatched as well. She was definitely impressed with your work. She said that you were a medical genius."

"Denise..." Seth said, and when he finally said her name he knew that the moment of truth—both literally and figuratively between them—had finally arrived after minutes, after years of buildup. He took a deep breath and lay a hand on the agent's shoulder.

"Denise...yea...look...I'm sorry for your loss. I know that the two of you had been divorced for some time, but what happened to her is beyond belief. Her death was a shock to me and our entire team as well."

"Her team," Chris looked around the floor. "Now that I look back at it I find it funny that, just like your wife, Denise never mentioned you were in Atlanta either. I saw her more than a couple of times after you're training sessions would had begun, but yet no mention of you."

Seth grinned like a madman.

"That is funny, Chris. You know, since we're already laughing, let me tell you something even funnier: Like I said a few minutes ago, I knew that the two of you were divorced for some time now. Perhaps...just perhaps, your ex-wife didn't feel that she owed you any explanation for what had been going on in her professional life."

"You're right there, Doctor," Chris smiled with him. "And that fact goes for her personal life as well."

And now it was Seth's turn at nodding.

"I didn't think that was my place to point that out, but thank you for saying it for me." And then the Gray Man surprised both men by squaring his shoulders and getting into Chris Prince face. He had stared down _death_ all the previous night; he wasn't going to let anyone intimidate him now.

Chris as expected didn't back down either.

They did the testosterone thing for a time until Seth noticed a torn piece of paper lying in the seat next to Chris that he had failed to notice before.

"Perhaps you should pay less attention to me, Chris, and more to that piece of paper next to your leg. I'm pretty sure that has something or the other to do with your lady friend returning with our cups of coffee."

"Don't dodge the subject, Doctor—"

"Why don't you take a look at what it says?"

Chris finally reached behind him and snatched the paper off of the seat and gave it a disinterested look over.

But when he read it a second time his reaction was far different—and more serious.

Special Agent Chris Prince ripped the note into pieces, cursed and stormed out of the club section without a word of goodbye for Seth. The doctor allowed the moment to breathe again. He was thankful that the conversation—and any connection to Denise Prince and eventually him being at her place when she threw herself out of the window were not completed.

He squatted down and took the time and effort to piece the four torn parts of paper together...and read the note in spite of himself.

It said:

" _I never lied to you, Chris. I never lied to you when I said that I didn't know when or where the suicide bombers would be initiated during Scar. What I am_ guilty _of is failing to mention to you that brainchild of all of this is me. The members of the Circle realized long before 411 that we could not win any prolonged engagement with Pandora. Once the Zero Hour passed and your agency as well as ours failed to secure the release of Atlanta's missing children from the clutches of Louis Keaton we knew that we had no out left. Once the cold war ended and the situation went hot, we knew that victory was unachievable—at least in any traditional sense of the word._

And yet, we knew that we had to make these last hours of a House in Chains—at least this present version of it—memorable for them and for us.

History must never forget the lessons that we teach it now.

I also want you to know that I loved your brother very much. He only learned of my feelings days before his end. And because of my love for Xavier Prince by extension, that means that you and I are family and I love you as well. And as a member of my family I feel the need to bid you farewell, even in this crude manner.

I heard you when you said that you were dying.

But it is I who won't live long enough to see you again, Christopher Prince.

It is time for a House in Chains to institute the final stages of Scar. We are to gather the last surviving members of the Circle, the Board and the higher ranking members of the Peacekeepers and are to engage in a massive suicide ritual at the mansion on Riverside Road on the south end of town.

The world will never forget what they will see there.

What do we see when we visualize our people's future?

We see days filled with misery and pain.

Seth dropped the torn letter as he felt discombobulated.

Special Agent Christopher Prince, the man who Seth had set off to Atlanta hurt or destroy must have been hurting inside more than anyone he knows—perhaps anyone that he ever has known. The Gray Man remembered the words of Quincy Morgan and his grandmother before him about the lasting effect of scars on the human conscious. And in some impossible sense, Seth understood the calamity that Quincy Morgan perpetrated on the world in the short hours Seth spent with the Peacekeepers one night earlier.

In his mind's eye, Seth could see Denise Prince as she hops through her window and dies again and again and again...

He could see the fury that a determined Roxanne Sanchez has for his wife Angel as she leaves him behind while her personal search for vengeance continues.

He sees Quincy Morgan scalping the head off of a dead James Carter and holding high and proud while the Peacekeepers celebrate in mass.

He sees Grace's letter for Chris and memorizes it nearly word for precious word although he'd only read it once.

And then the lights in the west club section of the Georgia Dome flicker on and off and on and then off...

Dr. Seth Dupree wanted to call out for Teresa again, he wanted to call out to _anyone..._ but suddenly his lips fail to form the words...

And then _all_ of the lights in the Gray Man's world went black as he passed out.
Episode 8 Tempest Rising

Chapter Twenty Three

This is the vision of our future.

-Quincy Morgan, seconds before his suicide attempt
Chris

**Drayton family mansion; Riverview Road, 26** th **Day**

Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan, serving as the interim head of the FBI, showed up at the foot of the Riverside Road Mansion with a force of armed personnel in his wake to be reckoned with: He'd summoned at least three dozen FBI, ATF and at least three other law enforcement folks that he could scrape up; it as a damned impressive feat, especially considering the extreme short notice and all that had went down in the city and countrywide in the past 48 hours or so. Chris had heard rumors of the APD going to complete shit, with the entire force splitting into half a dozen smaller units with an as many different allegiances and agendas.

Christopher Prince understood how much Sheridan had put his ass on the line too. If he'd pushed resources away from where they'd truly could have been an asset...

"What's our status?" Chris said to Sheridan as a means of greeting. He hadn't been in the other man's presence since before Lucy Burgess spilled his personal beans all over the kitchen floor for everyone to trip over.

"I received your report, Agent Prince." Sheridan shook Chris' hand with feeling. "And I'm inclined to believe you when you say that there are dozens of House in Chains members who have sealed themselves inside that mansion."

"Do you have a plan to get them out of there peacefully?"

Sheridan nodded but told Chris that he wasn't going to like it. Chris followed Sheridan's eyes to where they circled and fell...on Senior Hostage Negotiator Justin Ryan as he pulled his long self out of the deputy cruiser. He worked his way over to where the two of them were standing, straightened his tie and offered his hand to Chris who shook it, while never taking his eyes off of Sheridan.

Chris repeated his question to Justin Ryan.

"There is no plan in place for extracting them peacefully as you say, Agent Prince." Ryan told him. "We storm the mansion and force them out—alive if possible."

"Tell me that you aren't going to sign off on this?" Chris asked Sheridan in a desperate tone.

Sheridan reminded Chris of the information that he'd faxed over in the report about Grace Edwards, the assassination of his brother Xavier Prince by a traitorous element of the Peacekeepers and now this potential mass suicide ritual serving as the final chapter of Scar by a House in Chains.

He took a deep breath, ran his fingers through his snowcapped hair and his day old beard.

"Give me something concrete to go on here, Agent Prince. Give me something fathomable that tells us anything other than what your report has already informed me on and I'll consider alternatives." Sheridan said. "A mass suicide does no one any good here. I would rather have them arrested and tried for the crimes that have been perpetrated tonight."

"You want something concrete?"

"I do, Agent Prince."

Chris pointed his index finger at Ryan.

"Tell this man to get back in the car that brought him and lock his door."

Ryan frowned up and snorted.

"What? I won't do such a thing."

"I mean it," Chris said and folded his arms and stood his ground. "A House in Chains has done all of the damage that it's going to do. No one else in that building is alert to our potential presence outside of Grace Edwards. We don't know what the conversation has been like after everyone arrived. Maybe—just maybe cooler heads have prevailed. Hasn't there been enough ciaos tonight? Hasn't there been enough death tonight?"

Sheridan scrubbed at his beard until Chris could actually hear the man's fingers on his skin.

Ryan spoke first, "Don't be foolish enough to believe that last statement, Sheridan. If I heard through the grapevine correctly, Grace Edwards not only was in the Circle but is the admitted architect of Rapture and Scar. She could have easily set you up which in turn sets _us_ up, Agent Prince. All of this may be grand theatre in an elaborate ruse to lure FBI forces into an ambush—"

Chris snapped.

He reached across Sheridan and grabbed Justin Ryan around his bony neck and pulled him close enough to smell the peppermint on the man's breath. Sheridan reacted as quickly as his own weariness and surprise allowed him to separate Chris from Ryan.

"I want you hear this and hear it good, Ryan," Chris said as he tightened the hold on Ryan's collar. "Scar was madness. Scar was a tragedy of epic proportions. It was madness—but it is _over_ now."

Sheridan finally succeeded in getting in between the two men and Chris gave him one final shove that nearly toppled Ryan once he was free. The oldest man of the group rubbed at the sore neck and straightened his tie back out.

"O _h my God, Sheridan,_ don't tell me that you're going to even remotely consider going along with this crap of a plan. That mansion is huge. Shit, like I said, they could already know that we are here. They could be either entrenching themselves in the bowels of that place or tunneling out from some unknown passageway as we speak. In fact, your man here, Sheridan, your man Agent Christopher Prince himself, could be stalling _for_ them for all we know. He never disclosed the full measure of his relationship with Grace Edwards."

"Of course I'm aiding them," Chris laughed at the notion and then his tone boarded on contempt in a minute. "We're _all_ the same aren't _we_?"

Justin Ryan swore.

"Save that racist bullshit for someone who gives a damn, Agent Prince. That's not what I meant and you know it. You _are,_ however, the lone surviving sibling of Xavier Prince. It would be foolish to for anyone in this bureau to dismiss that you may be carrying emotional baggage in this matter. Call me what you want, Prince, I am _not_ a fool."

"None of us are fools, Ryan," Sheridan stepped between the two men in case things got out of hand again. He turned his attention to Chris. "What if you're wrong, Chris,"

Chris twisted his head away from the other two as if the question physically stung him. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. He'd let his temper get the upper hand far too often lately...that had to change.

He wanted to assure his boss. Although Grace Edwards played a major role in his reinstatement, Sheridan still had to vouch for him somewhere along the way to get him back into this game. Chris owed the man.

And then he saw _it._

A vision of his dead brother and Agent Blue being shot by his discharged weapon flashed in front of him—so real that it was almost tangible enough for Chris to reach out and touch it.

And it wasn't like he'd been above making mistakes. Grace had abandoned him at the triage center inside the Georgia Dome while he'd talked back and forward with Dr. Seth Dupree. He had thought that there was enough of a bond...enough _trust_ to allow her enough space and belief that she wouldn't dip on him during a point of vulnerability for him.

He'd made one miscalculation after the other in the past few days and hours. And shit, he was exhausted physically. He was sleepy. He was hungry.

And he was dying.

Never forget, my brother, you are dying of the same stomach disorder that killed mamma.

Ryan said, "I'll answer the question for you, Sheridan, if you are wrong in your judgement of this man and his motives, you are endangering every law enforcement person on duty here. You are also lessoning the death of every city servant who lost their life tonight serving their country all while— _the madness—_ as Agent Prince proclaimed it, unraveled around their ears."

Chris ignored Ryan for the moment. Instead he turned around to take in the panoramic view of the mansion. The earthquake had damaged a quarter of the windows that he could see. And if only a third of those windows had rooms—this place was indeed enormous.

And yet, it only had _one_ front door.

"I know a way to settle this," Chris said and by the time he looked at Sheridan, his boss already knew what he had in mind. "Hear me out, Sheridan. I can't tell you not to go with Ryan or anyone else's recommendation on this. The majority of the hardcore violence nationwide has passed. We are in a period of intermission. This resulting earthquake may have pushed us into here faster than it would have happened otherwise. But now we've got to think about tomorrow. What happens _tomorrow_ when people of color switch on their TV's and tablets and laptops and see dozens more of their people— _our_ people have their dead bodies spread across the tiled floor in HD in a firestorm created by the FBI. It won't matter to them that the truth is a mass suicide or a mass police incursion."

"We haven't accomplished much tonight otherwise," Sheridan shook his head. "We haven't recovered any of Atlanta's missing children."

"And Serena Tennyson is still loose," Chris added.

Sheridan stole a long look at the mansion. Ryan watched him, but the pain of defeat had painted his face red. _Or perhaps that pain is the betrayal you felt when you learned that your dear old friend, Raymond Rice was Pandora's Regent._

I wonder if you hurt nearly as much as I did when I learned my father was the Caretaker.

Chris continued to watch both men, but found that he kept a guarded eye on Ryan. He could see the man's muted lips utter: _Don't do this, Sheridan...don't do this._

Sheridan looked at the top his shoes.

"I look forward to reading your report, Agent Prince."

For better or worse Sheridan had made decision. For better or worse, Justin Ryan wasn't finished yet.

"Are you insane, Sheridan? The sooner this crisis ends, the sooner you are likely to be named Rice's successor. And yet, you are going to throw it _all_ away for this man."

"Maybe," Sheridan nodded without looking away from his shoes. "Go on, Agent Prince, let's not wait any longer." And then he fixed Justin Ryan with a sharp glare. "This is my call, Mr. Ryan." And then he turned his attention back to Chris as if it had never left him. "But if I hear as much as _one_ gunshot...all bets are off."

"Understood," Chris was off, angling towards the mansion's front door without bothering to look at Sheridan or Ryan again.

Getting inside the residence wasn't as difficult as he would have thought. He picked the lock with the skill and silence that Xavier had taught him when they were teens. Once inside he got his gun out, got low and slid himself along walls, behind furniture and along the floor inching his way forward.

The entrance opened into a huge atrium longer than one he'd ever seen even over at Ernestine Johnson's place. The walls were newly painted, the floor's wood finish spit shined and immaculate. Huge paintings of famous black leaders lined the walls down one of the nearby halls. He needed to keep moving, but he couldn't help note all of the historical figures in his presence. He saw Martin Luther King Jr, Malcom X, and President Adolphus Sweet...

...As well as portraits of his father Isaac Prince and his brother Xavier.

And then Special Agent Christopher Prince smelled the unmistakable scent of already rotting bodies even before he saw them.

There were bodied sprawled on top of other bodies loitered along seemingly every inch of space in the next room on the floor. Two bodies were keeled over on a nearby couch. Three more were slouched over loveseats. Many more had died while they sat at the dining room table.

They had poisoned themselves. It was the only logical conclusion. The common factor near each and every body was a plastic cup with red wine, or some similar substance, spilling on the surfaces around the dead bodies like blood. Chris went numb. Chris couldn't move. And all he could think of was if _he_ would look like these people here when his mother's cancer overtook him months from now.

He got his guard back up and his gun out in front of him again. Most of the poor bastards were probably higher level Peacekeepers, members of the board and others loyal to a House in Chains from a distance.

Where are you Grace Edwards? Where are you Quincy Morgan?

And then he found the two members of the Circle as well.

There was a small breakfast nook directly behind the dining room. _Small_ was a relative term, of course, in a place as vast as this mansion was. What he saw there reminded him of the classic setting from the Last Supper that he'd seen even as a child.

Grace Edwards was dead...of that it was no doubt. And to see the finality of it, to see her like that after the loyalty and love that she'd shown her brother and the help that she'd provided him—and yet, the born investigator in him was far more interested in _how_ she had died—and by the looks of it she had not gone down without a fight. _Good for you, Grace_

Chris kneeled over to where her body lay flat on the tile. He examined her fingernails, as polished and beautiful as they were earlier, were now broken and cracked. Someone else's skin and bruised blood was underneath them as well. _This wasn't about his betrayal of Xavier,_ he thought, as turned her hand over and again. It was far more personal than that. In the end, even with this potential of a HIV infection from her undercover work with the Bishop, Grace didn't want to go through with this. She didn't want to die. He felt for her pulse a long time after that to see if fate had awarded her wish...but to no avail.

Quincy Morgan had gone with even more of a bang; a death worthy of a Sargent of Arms of a House in Chains.

He'd shot himself in the back of the head, undoubtedly minutes after watching his flock die in front of him. In his mind's eye Chris could remember meeting this man for the first time in the Fox Theatre during the siege there. It felt like years ago now. And the special agent hadn't forgotten the sense of jealously that he felt towards the other man for his build and intelligence. How he had missed being _him_ in his younger days. How much he wanted to be respected and even _feared_ by other men once again.

And now it was little time left before Special Agent Christopher Prince joined this man in eternity.

Chris stopped in his tracks and prayed for God to send him a sign— _any_ sign or angel to let him know that He was still on the side of what was still good and righteous.

And then his business cell phone rang, startling him.

Chris answered the call without looking at the caller ID.

"Christopher,"

Angel. It was an _angel_ on the line.

"Christopher. Thank God you are alive. Thank God I reached you in time."

"Angel, where are you?" The questions came pouring out of him. "Where have you been? Are you alright?"

The Doctor told him where her approximate location was.

"Christopher, listen to me closely," She sounded as she had been waiting to unload her information for a long time. "Four of the missing children survived the ordeal. He and I have come to agreement for him turning himself in. Keaton's prepared to surrender to _you_ and you only. Do you understand me? No cavalry, no copters. No one should be there when this goes down except you, me, him and these children. We need you to hurry though. I think we're being tailed, but I'm not sure whether it is Pandora or somebody even more dangerous."

Chris heard shots ring through the phone. A second series of shots sounded even closer.

" _Angel,"_ Chris shouted into the receiver. " _Angel,"_

"Hurry, Christopher," The fear in Angel's voice was tangible and real. "I don't know how long we can make it out here."

And then the signal between the phones was lost.

He looked at the receiver for a minute before he dialed Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan and reported to his boss A House in Chains' horrible Vision of the Future that he'd found inside the mansion.

How could he have forgotten to tell Angel that her husband was alive, well, and here in Atlanta?
Chapter Twenty Four

Don't cry Hugh, I'm here. I won't let anyone hurt you again.

_-Louis Monroe's conversation with Hugh Keaton hours before Louis and his family died in a mysterious house fire, December 24_ th _, 1966_
Angel

**Stone Mountain, 26** th **Day**

AN HOUR EARLIER:

She found Louis Keaton, Moses Jackson and the other three boys slumped over, tired, weary, cold, hungry, scared and in near panic.

She found them using a precise recovery route from her memories of her time under Serena Tennyson with Pandora, great timing and fucking dumb luck. Going into this simple analytics told Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree that the chances of finding the lot of them alive was so obscenely remote, that the spill that she'd prepared for them seemed like a distant memory from someone else's life now that she was actually face to face with them.

And yet, she'd _found_ them and for the moment that's all that mattered.

Louis Keaton's general—Moses Jackson explained to her what had happened to them since Louis had engineered their escape from the clutches of Pandora and some compound miles from here. It wasn't all good. They'd lost two boys to the quake when their pickup truck overturned. Louis—that's what he referred to himself as in the interim—quickly told her that they were being followed by several other parties, not just men loyal to Serena Tennyson.

And then he told her that he'd barely overcome an _episode_ about a half an hour before she'd found them.

And she could see his eyes misting as he told her that Hugh was calling him even now as they stood here talking.

"Hugh," the doctor said as gently as she could and massaged his neck. _How many years has it been since I last saw you, Hugh._ She knew that their time was short—they were being chased and probably from many different directions, but she needed to know some things first. "Come over here, Hugh. Why don't you come over here and sit next to me please. You must be so tired. Please come. Sit."

"Why do you address me by calling me by the terrible name? Do you want to see him surface again? Do you want to have him destroy and chance that we have to survive tonight?"

"Just like I told you then I'm reminding you again now—you should make no mistake Hugh Keaton _is_ your true self." Angel said. "You've used this Louis persona as an escape mechanism all of this time. I can't blame you for that. It was safe there. It was civilized there. Whoever this Louis person was he was a...he was an angel. And you've been slipping back and forth into this alternate persona for years as a means of escape from the realities of the horrible things that you have done."

If only all of us were blessed to be able to do what you are able to do.

_If only_ I _could do the same._

Louis was shaking his head in denial. Moses could see the conflict—the tempest rising within him. Moses backed up to the other boys—the children of the storm—and wrapped his arms around them as if he were a mobile barrier as if he could truly keep them safe.

Angel wasn't afraid of Louis. She was afraid _for_ him. She scanned their perimeter the way Christopher had taught her. The haze from the smoke made the task all the more difficult. _Although the conditions make it just as problematic for those who would wish this man harm in a vail attempt to free the children._ If someone chose to take their shot at him, the children standing too far away from here would draw their fire more freely. Of course she didn't want these boys hurt. They'd been through far too much as it was, they'd have memories that would already haunt them the rest of their lives. _Just as it haunts you, Christopher,_ she thought, _just as it haunts you my beloved best friend._

She reminded herself again of her motivations: She did not want those boys hurt, but Louis had risked much on a personal level and his professional relationship with some very dangerous colleagues in Pandora to get them this far. He wasn't a hero, but he had done something very heroic. He deserved to complete his treatment although imprisonment with other animals like Muhammad Clark downstate was far more likely.

"I need Hugh's strength with us now if we are going to make it out of here alive." Angel said to him.

"No," Louis shook his head. "No. I won't accept your explanation. You're trying to manipulate me, Doctor, confuse me. You don't want to awaken _him."_

Angel got close.

"Serena Tennyson tried to manipulate you, confuse you. She wanted to get into your head, but you rose above it all. Just look at you now."

"Stop it...stop it please..." Louis Keaton said in a weak voice.

"Serena wanted you to believe that Hugh was evil. He was a monster to her. He was a creature of the night that she wanted unleashed only when it served her needs. "No wonder you thought that he was corrupted and evil when you slipped back into his persona."

Louis Keaton fell to his knees and wrapped his head with his arms.

"Serena was right about me, Doctor. You are right about me, Doctor _."_ He finally said after a time. "Hugh is the personification of evil. Hugh was the personification of evil. Look at the terrible things that I've done with my life. Look at all the deaths and suffering that I am responsible for."

"I don't know your story. I can guess that you have been tormented. You've been used, abused and tortured."

And so he told her...he told her it all with brevity and clarity and a daunting sense of purpose that nearly brought Angel to tears.

"What happen to this persona of Louis Keaton who is standing before you right now? What about him?"

Angel flashed him a smile that was littered in her own deep empathy she held for him as she crouched in her stance.

"Your friend Louis and his family were brutally murdered by your uncle in a house fire. Louis was your friend. He was likely the only true friend that you've ever known. He was tough, loyal and honorable...and all that is good in this world and the next. He was also a kid who was killed that day years ago. You lived. You lived on."

"And you, Doctor, you..." He said through a fresh round of tears. "You've been kind to me before, Doctor."

"I understand you, Hugh. We all have our means of escape to nurture us when we are hurting. You use Louis. I use...I use sex and alcohol...I use a lot of alcohol to escape, Hugh."

And I wish that I had a bottle right now? I wish that I do with every fiber of my being.

Instead, she watched Hugh Keaton stand up taller than ever before.

"Somehow I knew that you would come for me, Doctor." He said with a voice that suddenly was confident and strong. "I told Moses and the other boys that you would find us. We just had to stay together and believe in one another. And here you are. You are here just as I knew that you would be."

"I believe that you've been calling out to me since all of this began, since 411. You've been leaving me subtle messages all along the way. You simplified it for me."

"Messages," The confident voice was gone again. "What messages are you talking about, Doctor?"

Now it was Angel's turn to stand at her full height and place a hand on her hip. She felt an ache in her side where a knife had punctured there in her mini scrap with Roxanne Sanchez on the Marta far away from where she was right now. A heavy gust of wind tossed her brown hair here and everywhere. _Another storm is coming on the city._ It looked as if this city's torment would never end. She could smell something burning in the distance. Otherwise this isolated area of the city just south of I20 was still.

It was _too_ damned still.

"You staged those murder scenes with the dolls as a clue that you had these children in your possession." She answered his last question at last. "You were giving my hints that they could be hurt by Serena if Special Agent Christopher Prince and the other FBI Agents didn't find the compound in time after the Zero Hour passed."

He shook his head and held himself tightly as if he would melt in the spot where he stood.

"You're wrong, Doctor. I'm sorry, but you are so wrong. I don't remember designing any scenes or handling any dolls. Serena must have had someone else create these scenes that you are speaking of. I _do_ remember hearing the Regent and Serena mentioning the need to keep your people off balance whenever they could, but I never heard them finalize any plans involving this particular method that you are speaking of right now."

Angel cocked a brow, considering any and all possibilities that she'd failed to explore before. _Are you capable of lying to me about this, Hugh?_ Who else would Oracle have trusted with those scenes?

And then some alarm bells and whistles went off in her head... _damn..._ this wasn't all on her head this time. She wanted to follow through this with him, but she knew time wasn't on her time now. She had missed a step—a very _important_ clue somewhere. But for now, at the least, she needed Hugh Keaton to continue to hover here on the surface.

And she needed him right now.

"You've always underestimated your intellectual abilities, Hugh. Your ability to adapt to any situation or environment is unmatched. Your true enemies concentrate on your weaknesses until it is time to exploit you for their purpose. I want to look long and hard at your strengths."

"I have let them exploit me," Hugh found some stability in his stance. "I do have strengths."

"Yes, you have, Hugh. You knew that it was probable that I would be involved in this investigation since long before Pandora launched the 411 attacks on the city of Atlanta. You knew that I would know that you would have Atlanta's children in your possession. Your history had told me that you wouldn't hurt them—at least in any long term way. "

And then Angel cocked a brow.

"You wouldn't hurt them then," she said. "And you won't do anything now that would hinder their chances of reaching their loved ones."

Moses Jackson walked up to where the two adults were standing.

"Haven't we stayed here long enough, Miss?" He asked. "Are we going home now? Are you going to help him take us the rest of the way home?"

"Soon, Moses," Angel said with a tight smile. She quickly turned her concentration, her focus again on Hugh. "It is time to embrace your true self, Hugh Keaton. Come with me now. Let's all go home."

"And then?"

"And then we all began to pay the steep price for all of the mistakes we've made in our lives so far, Hugh. You will pay. I will pay. Moses and these children will also pay as Christopher Prince has all of these years."

"Chris..." he said. "My general...is my general coming to see us? Is he coming to save us?"

"He will," Angel methodically removed Roxanne Sanchez's cell phone from her pocket. "All that I need you to do is give me the permission to call him. He could help us dodge whoever it is that is in pursuit of us. Your old general could help these boys make it to safety the way that you wanted him to keep those boys safe all of those years ago."

"Safety," The word sounded heavenly as it came off of his lips. "I want these boys to feel safe again. I want it for myself so very badly."

Angel nodded and said: "Moses Jackson and these other boys will suffer nightmare of this ordeal for the rest of their lives, just like your general, Christopher Prince has. But they will live on, just as Christopher Prince has. Life is the key to all of this, Hugh. And perhaps they'll use this setback as a means to thrive the way that your first general has thrived. Let me call him, Hugh. He can help us."

Hugh Keaton nodded an ok.

Angel reached her childhood friend after a handful of rings. She was thrilled to hear his voice. He had survived the Zero Hour, Scar, the earthquake, and all of the terrors that the Atlanta nights had thrown at them all.

And yet, what was he going through at that particular moment that he hadn't even realized that he was talking to _her_ and not Roxanne Sanchez on the other woman's personal line. She gave him a terse update of what had recently happened, their likely position and the terms of Hugh Keaton's surrender.

The first new round of shots sounded close—and then a second round of shots spit passed where they were all standing.

She and Hugh both drove for the ground, taking Moses and the other boys down with them.

" _Angel_ ," Chris shouted into the receiver. " _Angel_ ,"

" _Hurry, Christopher_ ," The fear in Angel's voice was tangible and real. "I don't know how long we can make it out here."

And then the signal between the phones was lost.

A minute after the disconnection Angel wondered to herself: How did she forget to mention to Christopher that Roxanne was still alive, relatively well and at the Marta Station with other victims of the earthquake?
Chris

**Stone Mountain, 26** th **Day**

From this distance and elevation, it looked to Special Agent Christopher as if Louis Keaton (or whatever they profile referred to monsters as this morning) had shrouded the four surviving boys and his best friend Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree with his frail frame of a body. All of them looked as if they were nearing a panic even as Keaton slid from one spot to another as if not to give any alleged sniper in this area a less clean spot at the pedophile and raising the risk of hitting one of those children percentage points.

And yet this situation looked even more desperate in the 45 minutes or so that it had taken them to get here from the last time he'd spoken to Angel on his cell. He'd only tried ring her up once more since that conversation. And everything considered, the doctor had done a bang up job of describing their position.

Chris asked, "What in the hell happened here?"

Sheridan was wiping his latest round of perspiration off of his thick brows. He could only shrug an answer while he struggled to catch his breath. Normally a drive from just west of downtown out here to near Stone Mountain in eastern Atlanta would take about 20 minutes if you didn't run into any traffic snarls.

This murky Atlanta morning, however, didn't qualify as anything close to normal.

It took them that 20 minute count alone to maneuver through two neighborhoods near the mansion while being shot at street level by of gang of about 10 or 12 citizens who'd claimed the streets as territory of their own. Sheridan had lost a fifth of his convoy in the exchange and looked as if he'd taken a bullet in and out of his left shoulder for his trouble. The rest of the lost minutes were spent maneuvering around debris of cars, buildings and the occasional debris of human bodies that the earthquake had left in its wake.

Serena had hid the children well indeed.

Chris mouth went dry and he could feel a huge gust of wind whipping up dirt near his neck and ears. He felt a devastating shot of pain in his gut—that he wasn't able to mask from Sheridan's eye, but shrugged him off before he could ask him questions he didn't want to answer.

He was spending his last days alive in the generation of well laid planners: Serena Tennyson, Grace Edwards and his father Isaac Prince among others.

"It could be anybody following them," Sheridan said in a loud voice so he could be heard by Chris and the other half a dozen or so men in close proximity. "It could be the reminisce of a Pandora cell or one of those volunteer search parties that we'd organized a few weeks ago trying to play hero by taking Keaton out." Sheridan dropped his eyes. Either he was bracing them against the windstorm or trying to focus on a particular that he'd seen south of their position down there. His face reddened either from fatigue or embarrassment. "All of the resources that this department possesses and we have to depend on some weekend warriors to do the discovery for us."

Chris got close to Sheridan so he wouldn't have to yell. The man needed to learn the revelation that was told to him by cell on their way up here.

A Sargent Valarie Briscoe of the Atlanta Police Department, a professional ally and a personal friend of Chris for years now tearfully gave him the scoop of what might be going on out here. She said told him that she never believed that bullshit about him and any sexual misconduct with his now dead step daughter Erica Lovings. She also told him that she'd heard rumors that his brother Xavier Prince had _bought it_ and from the hand of his own people at that, and that she was sorry for his loss, but her call wasn't about any of that.

What she told him next astounded him—and Sheridan as well when he passed the information on to the acting Director of the FBI.

" _What?"_ Sheridan said in near exasperation. A pain shot through his shoulder. "You just can't make this shit up can you?"

Chris shook his head.

Sargent Briscoe told him that her second underneath him and a small group of men had broken off from the 'protect and serve' element of the APD into an independent crew of vigilantes who were calling themselves Hell's Gate. They had gotten valuable intel—she didn't know from where—of Keaton's approximate location and they had set out with scoped rifles and tons of ammunition in hopes of putting the man out of everyone's misery before sunset tonight.

"Of all the dumb luck it looks as if their information was concrete. Their out here...somewhere; look Sheridan, I wouldn't beat yourself up about it. These smaller cells of the APD have been showing up all over the city from what Briscoe told me. Some are fighting on the side of the light, while others have strayed along a darker path. Anyway, just remember that Pandora had the jump on us—this was their hideaway after all—and apparently they hadn't had any luck in finding Keaton either." Chris paused and then finished his thought: "We do have to keep this situation contained and not let those boys get hurt."

"We've got bring our own drinks to the party huh?"

"What?"

Justin Ryan shouted a goodbye into his cell phone, got out of the car he'd shared with Sheridan on the ride out here and angled his slight frame through the wind gust until he found himself standing next to the two FBI Agents. Chris looked behind where the former hostage negotiator had walked from a saw a bustle of activity to the south and east of their position.

Sheridan pointed out to an area 100 yards or so that Chris wouldn't have noted otherwise before the younger agent could open his mouth in protest. He put a hand on Chris' shoulder and turned him so he could see more men and equipment setting up points to the southwest and west as well.

Louis Keaton and _anyone_ who sought to do the troubled man any harm were surrounded, but should be well outside of sight of the man just below them.

Sheridan had put a lot on the line and trusted Chris' judgement back at the mansion and now it was his turn to return that trust to his boss right now to get _everyone_ a few feet below them out of this alive.

"I have my sources as well, Agent Prince," Sheridan managed a tight smile. "I've been told that there could be as many as _six_ different parties out here in close proximity. I agree with you that this---Hell's Gate is probably our biggest threat though. Listen to this though: I'm convinced that gunshots that you heard over the cell were from another group. I've also been told that our good doctor put a round in the leader's side. Those men called off their pursuit to tend to that man's wounds."

"Angel and the others don't look like they've taken any direct fire yet?"

"They're alright," Sheridan's smile was gone as if it never had existed at all. "I would think that they are holding up in a physical sense as best as they can, though they've got to be fatigued, hungry and mentally spent by now."

Chris nodded and took the opportunity to steal another look below. Sheridan was on point. Keaton was not looking well especially. He would unravel the longer it took for this thing to settle. And when he emotionally collapsed people would die.

Ryan took the quick moment of silence to offer his opinion.

"I don't think that your assessment of this Keaton fellow is entirely accurate, Sheridan." He said and held up his hand to silence both men while he continued to his point. "Look, that monster squeezed the hell out of every moment he's been allotted to take these hostages in the first place."

"Damn you and your theories, Ryan," Chris spoke up. "He was and is still prepared to surrender to me. Angel—Dr. Hicks Dupree and I have already worked it out. And Sheridan's people are securing the perimeter against any and all enemies. We don't need you—"

Ryan chuckled.

"You and your doctor girlfriend have 'worked it out' as you say? I surely hope that those boys' parents have their insurance policies paid up—"

Chris snatched Ryan off of his feet by the collar.

Sheridan wedged himself in between the men for the second time in the past few hours. Chris shoved the slight man away. Sheridan fixed a hardened gaze squarely on his subordinate. "Unfortunately, Agent Prince, I find myself siding with Mr. Ryan on this front. I do not doubt Dr. Hicks-Dupree assessment of the man or his situation. I've had my differences with that woman's approach to her job but not with the professionalism and expertise she exhibits once her head is screwed on correctly. My point _is_ this, Chris, if Keaton were planning a peaceful surrender to you, which probability lessens with each passing second because all of these outside factors."

"Don't tell me you're giving up? I gave her my word that we would bring him in alive."

"Bring him back alive for _what?"_ Ryan snorted. "Look around you, Agent Prince. Even if you take the earthquake damage out of the scenario the damage is done. Pandora and a House in Chains both got what they wanted: A shooting war." He put a hand on one of his slender hips and relaxed his stance. "Look, I can respect what you did back at that mansion. I can damn well respect what you saw in there. You were _right._ But we're here now. And there has to be a line between optimism and foolery. Respectfully, Agent Prince, I think that you're crossing that line here."

Chris exhaled...Ryan's words and Sheridan's silence was cutting deep into an area of his psyche that he didn't want to explore further. It pissed him off something bad that this skeleton of a man could be right in his assessment.

And then another shot rang out.

Chris saw Keaton's head spin around and back—perhaps in anticipation of taking a killing shot that never came. He screamed and the wind carried the sound far away from here. Angel looked as composed as she could manage under the circumstance. She had a small gun pointed in the direction that she likely thought the shot was fired from. Two of the boys had dropped to their knees and were wailing. In that moment Chris had decided that all three of them—himself, Sheridan and Justin Ryan were all wrong about this situation worsening further...

They were already there.

Sheridan looked as if he'd reached that conclusion as well.

"Look, I want you to talk to me, Agent Prince, give me something plausible to work with here."

"Dammit, everything that we do here is pure speculation, Sheridan. I know Keaton. Remember that, Sheridan, I _know_ this man better than anybody else here, even Dr. Hicks Dupree. If he wanted those boys dead then he would have stayed behind at the compound where they were safely tucked away and waited on Serena Tennyson to command someone out to clit their throats if she hadn't planned to do the deed herself." _Just like you had commanded, Dad,_ he thought. "We don't know if one or _any_ of those boys have been molested."

"And?"

"And they are _alive,_ Agent Sheridan." Chris replied. "They have been Atlanta's missing children. They have been found alive and that means a lot to the people of the city moving forward. It still means a hell of a lot to millions of people in this country of _all_ races moving forward. Louis Keaton deserves to be arrested, tried, convicted and possibly even given a death sentence for what he's done here and what he's done in the past. He does _not_ deserve to be shot down like some rabid dog. And this comes from a man that deserves to take that shot more than _anyone_ who is here today."

Sheridan nodded after a time.

"Your point is well taken, Agent Prince. We'll set up as wide a perimeter as we can manage. I don't want anything getting through our net. I just don't know how much longer we'll be able to contain this situation and all of those scoped rifles out there. We also have no guarantees that we'll be able to locate and incapacitate those other search parties out there before someone squeezes off a round and takes Keaton out."

"Understood," Chris took out his weapon and handed it but first to the man who was making this last ditch effort possible. "I'm going in."

" _You're doing what, Agent Prince?"_ Ryan through his skinny arms into the air, " _Sheridan, you are going to let this man go through with this."_

Chris spoke first: "Remember what I said before, Sheridan, I know Keaton and more importantly he knows me as well. He may even _trust_ me to an extent. There are two people here who are the most capable of resolving this thing peacefully and that are Dr. Hicks Dupree and me."

"Then you better hurry," Ryan said in a grave voice. "I think your window of opportunity just got significantly shorter."

"How do you mean?" Sheridan asked.

When Special Agent Christopher Prince twisted himself around he immediately saw what the former hostage negotiator had seen. This was of crisis and kings. And the kings had sent the eye of the world to witness for them indeed.

Someone, who knew who, had tipped off the media to this locale and to the latest crisis among all the others that was taking place. At least two dozen reporters drove up to the mountain's side in pickup trucks and in jeeps and three wheelers. They hopped out of the vehicles as quickly as their legs would carry them and started making their way all around the area like ants on an anthill.

"This shit keeps getting worse and worse," Chris said to no one in particular.
Hugh

**Stone Mountain, 26** th **Day**

He first caught sight of Special Agent Christopher Prince as the man worked his way down to the hill to their position. His first general had gotten over half way down when Louis had taken notice of how fit he'd grown over the years.

_Not too bad for a dead man,_ his other voice said from somewhere just underneath the surface of his conscious.

What are you saying, Hugh. What does that mean?

_It means exactly what_ we _said. But we have guessed that we have forgotten. The Dragon lady told us that she knew—that somehow she knew that our poor general was dying. She knew that our general was dead man._

Perhaps she had seen it in her flames.

Well he wasn't moving too badly for a dead man. Perhaps this is the way a man felt at his height in the weeks and days before his sickness set in, before the worse of his illness began to cripple his body... _the way that our mind has been crippled over the years._

Hugh Keaton was only faintly aware that the other man had reached him at last.

He went on the defensive and slid himself behind the doctor. But then he realized he'd exposed himself to any potential shooter from his rear and inched himself up a foot or two. Angel looked ragged, but pleased to be reacquainted with her friend and the two shared a brief but emotional embrace.

"Hello, General," Keaton knew little else to say. "I mean hello, Christopher."

Chris caught Angel's look and stayed silent for the time being. She had that way about her. She knew that he was in the latter more advanced stages of a psychological flux as people in her profession would call it. She knew that it was better not to push him unless the situation offered her no other alternative. She had hoped that he would stay neutral during the first moments of this reunion with his general. She knew that something as a simple perception of disrespect of being addressed incorrectly could set either one of these men with a difficult history off.

"Keaton, I came just like I said that I would." Chris said, but his body language was uttering something else entirely. "Unfortunately, I'm not entirely alone. Look up there and over yonder."

Angel tugged at Keaton's arm to keep him still as he felt himself moving away.

"I'm sure that your general had little to no say so in this manner," She offered up the man's excuse for him. But Keaton noted that her tone was hinting at near contempt levels for the bureau. The disease of distrust was spreading. He had been an agent of Pandora. He knew that disease all too well. "I told you that Christopher would come for you and he has."

"Yes," Chris said. "I am here and I'm going to help you as much as I can, Keaton."

"My name is _Hugh,"_ Keaton said partly in pride, partly in terrorized realization. Chris looked immediately into his friends big brown eyes for an explanation. The doctor had a measured look of satisfaction on her thick top lip. "My name is Hugh Keaton. _Louis..._ Louis Pope was a boy who died with his family long ago trying to save me from my uncle. Yes, my name is Hugh. I won't respond to anything else."

"Alright, fine," Chris said excising the last of his patients. The other man looked around again, working something important or the other around in his mind. Hugh Keaton looked with him. There were both civilians and uniformed people _everywhere._ Many were armed. "So where do we go from here, Hugh?"

"I've embraced my true self—and my destiny. I am sure that I won't be allowed to live much longer."

"And I have embraced my destiny as well," Agent Prince said in a sad voice. Angel, for one of the few times Hugh had ever known her, looked confused. "So I can appreciate where you are coming from. I'm here to spare you from any more pain." He made eye contact with the boys and Hugh commended the man for forcing himself to smile when it was the last thing in the world he wanted to do right now. "I want to spare all of you from any more pain."

"I wish that you could, Christopher." Hugh said. "I wish that you could keep your promise." And before the FBI Special Agent could usher any more of his lies the man who now referred to himself as Hugh Keaton said: "Please spare me any long spills about duty. I don't need to hear any monologues about the changing world we all live in either. You are here—you have risked what little life you have left to save these children _only_. You are here to save your doctor friend from my vile, evil clutches."

"I'm here to do that too, Hugh."

Keaton said nothing else for a time. He braced himself—they all did against another strong gust of wind that were becoming more and more frequent with the storm approaching. He stole a long glance around the mountain. He'd lived his entire youthful life up the road in Tennessee in or around mountain ranges just like this one—but he never really seemed to _see_ them. This was a beautiful part of the world to live in.

This was a beautiful part of the world to _die_ in.

And yet, Hugh seemed to only have eyes for Christopher Prince.

"Just look at you," He said again. "You are all grown up. You are a man now. You have become the man that your father always knew that you would be."

Angel flashed her look of confusion again. Chris fought off hurt...he rubbed salvia building at the corners of his mouth, but somehow had found his voice again.

"Ever since the day that he let you take me away from my mother and my brother Xavier I became a man, Hugh. I became a man because I had to." And then Chris found eyes for young Moses Jackson and somehow he _knew_ he was gazing at the childhood version of himself without having to state it aloud. _Both_ generals knew it. " _We_ wouldn't have survived any other way would we?"

"Survival," Keaton shook his head as the sadness of his plight nearly overwhelmed him. "I want to survive this, Christopher."

"I don't think it's too late," Angel said to him, but looked from Chris to the many faces surrounding their position, but strange and unfamiliar faces to her. "But there is danger all around us. It's probably worse, Hugh, than both you and I realize right Christopher?"

Agent Prince nodded with some urgency.

"She's right as usual, Hugh. We have to deal with the hand we've been dealt. You need to surrender to me as we three agreed that you would an hour and half ago. Are you prepared to do that? Are you strong enough to keep your emotions in control so we can all walk away from this alive?"

There are so many of them...and so few of us.

"There is a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella of company and fellowship..." Hugh heard his voice trail off and he began to cry. "I may deserve death, but I don't _want_ to die. I'm _so_ scared right now, Christopher. _I want to live."_

"So do I," Agent Prince said and it was the doctor who neared tears as her best friend's words meaning became clearer to her. "Let's start the ball rolling by releasing Dr. Hicks Dupree into my custody and care. Doctor, you will take these boys one by one to the care of your old comrade Agent Sheridan and his people just over that hill while I stay with Hugh."

" _No,"_ Hugh said quickly. "The doctor stays behind. She allowed herself to be detained to shield me from being potentially shot down by...by whoever is pursuing me. The boys stay as well. We all walk together or not at all. Otherwise, one of these trigger happy people may get an itchy finger. I'll be dead if only _one_ of these men makes an error in judgement or conscious."

"I have to side with Hugh on this one, Christopher." Angel said. "He has done some horrible things, some unforgivable, and I'm sure that many people behind those guns out there aren't nearly as clear headed as you."

"Alright, I don't have the time to argue this point. As you said, Doctor, we already have impatient people with Hugh in their scopes as we speak. We need to move though before this gets anymore out of hand."

Hugh Keaton could see that for himself thank you. In the near distance he saw more civilians—probably those employed by the mass media—flooding the area with hopes of spreading their lies and innuendoes. He knew that his first general knew that all too well. For better or worse, the next few moments of his life would play out for the entire world to see.

And then he made an executive decision.

"Alright, Christopher, I've changed my mind. I'll go with your original plan. I'll release the children into the doctor's care if you'll tell these boys one thing for me first?"

Agent Prince squared his shoulders and stood his ground.

"One point, Hugh," He said. "And then we have to go."

"When your father let me take you, I promised him and subsequently promised _you_ that I would never touch you no matter the personal or professional cost to me." Hugh said and then he specifically found the young eyes of Moses Jackson staring back up at him. "All those years ago, I kept my word to you. I didn't touch you. I want you to tell Moses that at the least a horrible human being like me _can_ keep his word."

Christopher looked to the horizon—pained. Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree looked as if she wanted to go to her friend to comfort him...but the thought of leaving the children even more vulnerable to an errand or stray sniper's bullet kept her at bay.

"We need to go, Hugh," was the only answer that his first general could supply. "I won't be able to hold Sheridan and his people off for much longer."

"Tell them, Christopher," Hugh pleaded. " _I need you to tell them that I kept my word."_

" _No,"_ Chris said—and then clarified his lone word's meaning so there would be no mistake. He looked at Moses Jackson once again. "This man, Hugh Keaton, gave me his word that he wouldn't molest me and he never did. But there a _re_ many types of hurt, many types of pain that one human being can administer onto another. I had nightmares about my captivity. I still do. You children—especially _you,_ Moses, will suffer as I have suffered. But you will survive. You will all live on...as...as I continue to live on."

And you are right, Christopher...you are so very right.

We have hurt so many.

I _have hurt so many._

And there was nothing that he could say or do that would be able to undo what had already been done.

But he would at least start with...

"I'm sorry. I know that now. I'm so very sorry for what I've done to _all_ of you."

"I don't accept your apology, Hugh, I just _can't_." Chris said. "But I have a question for you as well."

Angel took an involuntary step towards her friend.

"Don't do this _now,_ Christopher."

"Let him speak, Doctor," Hugh said. "The floor is his. Ask your question, General. I owe you an answer at the least."

"How did my father know to choose you? How did he _know?"_

Keaton looked away. He looked back and found all five sets of eyes burning through him awaiting his answer.

Chris patience was running thin.

" _Answer me, damn you. You say that you owe me. Tell me the truth."_

Keaton suddenly heard something...he could feel a new sensation blowing into this area and it wasn't the storm.

It was faint a first and he couldn't put a name to it.

And then the doctor and Agent Prince must have heard it as well and they reacted to it, especially Christopher because he began to swear and curse like Hugh Keaton had never heard a man swear and curse before.

The boys joined the grownups in the game of search and find—they looked to the skies for answers—

And then they _all_ found that answer seemingly at once.

"Oh my God, no," It was Angel who had spoken.

The hornets were buzzing all around him just like his dead Uncle Templeton had long ago said that they would.

There were four helicopters flying towards him.

He must fly away.

He must.

When Keaton first started to run—he felt the doctor dive at his legs. He would remember that much at the least. She clawed at the one that was nearest to him, but failed to wrap her arms around the bone the way she would have preferred. Moses Jackson didn't quite understand what was going on...but he gave his best effort in helping her but missed as well.

Agent Prince had made a quick decision of his own—the same one that Hugh would have made in his place—and gathered and shielded the other boys as his top priority. He dove on top of them in an attempt to shield them from all seen and unseen dangers as his federal government training had instructed him to.

The FBI was running towards him.

Some of the journalist ran away.

It was ciaos in its most perfect form.

And then Hugh Keaton raised his arms and ran like the fool that his uncle had frightened him to be.

And after four or perhaps five steps Hugh heard the sound of firecrackers.

And he felt a hundred mosquito bites on his arms, torso, neck, legs and on his head.

And then they were standing over the top of him: The doctor; Agent Prince; various FBI personnel; reporters; Moses Jackson; and finally the other three boys he'd held against their will.

He did not know how much time had passed.

He could feel the doctor's touch...and the wetness of her tears as she kneeled down next to him.

Why would she cry for him after what he'd done? Why would anyone cry for him?

He saw TV cameras a plenty and heard the _clicking_ sound of still ones taking hundreds of pictures of what was a very lonely boy from Memphis, Tennessee.

The doctor was still crying, but Hugh used the last of his strength to reach out for where Christopher Prince had stooped down. To the man's credit he only pulled back a little.

"Your father...Isaac Prince...the Caretaker sought me out, trusted me because I gave him my _word."_ Keaton said as his breathing slowed with each passing second. "Sometimes a word is all that a man has...even a creature like me. I kept my word."

He saw the fading image of Agent Christopher nod at his words and excuse himself from the scene. Was everything fading, or were his own tears clouding his view. The doctor hadn't stopped crying. And for whatever reason her crying was _all_ that he could hear.

Well, at least most of the physical pain was fading.

He fixed his attention of Moses who was staring back with what exactly...was it hurt, disgust, curiosity or some strange mix of all of them?

But then the boy surprised him, surprised them all by touching Hugh on his face. He wiped the tears from his eyes and off of his cheeks. Hugh was so thankful for that. He was so thankful that in his dying moments, that he could see Moses and the rest of them all so very clearly now.

And then—

And then, just as quickly, Moses got to his feet again and retreated back to where the other boys and Christopher Prince was standing...and he saw his generals together for the first and last time.

Hugh Keaton knew that there is a human sense of comfort and relative safety when you are sheltered under the umbrella of company and fellowship.

Even Atlanta's missing children knew this to be true.
Serena

**Centennial Park, 26** th **Day**

So poor Louis Keaton was now dead;

Serena Tennyson touched the glass in front of the department store down here in Centennial Olympic Park first with her fingernail and then the skin on the palm side and rubbed it with some affection. She was far from alone. She was parked on the sidewalk in front of nearly 40 or 50 people who'd camped out and were watching a national telecast of the morning news.

_This store is relative undamaged considering both the earthquake damage and looting that occurred along this block._ The looting and petty theft had been the norm during the late night hours overnight. Perhaps the sunlight and a least a minimum presence of the an APD cell that called themselves Protect and Serve, who were still performing the duties as they were sworn to, had discouraged such reckless behavior.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the people of Atlanta had grown weary of violence all together.

She felt _something_ for Louis. She really had. He had lived as such a misunderstood individual—ultimately even by her. He had grown much since she'd been in charge of his original training...and yet he had ultimately disappointed her at the same time. He could have grown into such _more._ That disappointment she felt extended to her seeing Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree on the news feed as well. Sure, they'd shared a certain kinship of course. Now she was seeing the other woman balling her eyes out national TV for a known pedophile was proving to be unsettling to say the least. _Perhaps the doctor would have felt the same level of_ discomfort _at my own emotional display when a known professional killer Danielle Rohm died when the earth underneath her swallowed her up whole._

She didn't see Christopher Prince on camera. That fact wasn't a real surprise, especially if Nicholas Sheridan was running the FBI now that Raymond Rice's betrayal had been exposed for the entire world to see. She was faintly interested if her old adversary was still alive or had the night claimed him as well. She was betting on his survival. She was _counting_ on it. He had proven a resilient if not stubborn opponent just as his younger brother Xavier had been.

The Caretaker would have been so very proud of his offspring.

She looked on. She used her slim figure and her elbows to carve out just enough room to breathe her own air as the crowd grew expeditiously larger every few minutes. She saw Moses Jackson and three of the other surviving boys being escorted to and lowered into unmarked vehicles. When one of the boys looked back at the camera, his appearance brought out boisterous cheers and applause—and even tears from those people directly behind her. People of color were hugging one another. Others who looked like her were praising their God. _Hours ago, you people may have been at each other's throats._ Now they were interacting as if those hours had been years and even decades ago. Suddenly the cheering had become so fierce, so emotional that Serena could barely hear herself think.

And she _needed_ to think.

Oracle had been out of contact with her associates for hours now. She did know that her suicide agents would have all but exhausted their use over the city by now.

There was only one command left for her give:

Whirlwind.

The strongest gust of wind she'd felt this morning whipped past where she and the others were standing. _Is this a portent of what is to come?_ At this moment she was torn to whether or not to unleash the Dragon's version of Hell on this city. She looked around her and over the horizon. The conditions couldn't be more perfect—or riper from cataclysmic damage to the city's already frail infrastructure from the coming firestorm if she'd plotted it herself. The rioting had started the process. The earthquake had certainly hastened the destruction. And it was an act of destruction that if her even flames hadn't anticipated.

And now the storm of the century, as some meteorologist was calling it, this wind maker of epic proportions was descending on the city.

And where are you right now, Thomas?

Parts of her wanted to abandon all that was coming and seek Thomas Pepper out. And yet, she wondered if reappearance in his life would ring destruction down on him as well. She'd been the common thread in the deaths of all the people she'd been associated and even grown to care about.

She'd lost her father and mother.

She'd lost Caretaker and the regent.

Louis Keaton was gone.

Even Danielle Rohm had died.

So what would happen if Serena found Thomas Pepper alive? She'd already introduced mayhem and destruction into his life when she commanded Shooter to kill both his maid and his assistant.

Why would you want me, Thomas?

An older woman brought her back to the moment as Serena felt her squeezing her thin hand with her wrinkled one. Serena looked back at her sharply—she'd never been comfortable with human contact...and yet when looked into the older woman's eyes and saw the smile lighting up her ancient face—

Suddenly the people on this particular strip of sidewalk in this small corner of Atlanta began to dance in the streets. Someone had turned on boom box. The music wasn't tuned to any music that remotely fit her taste, but she couldn't deny the upbeat rhythm that the song was generating through the speakers.

Serena pulled her hand out of the other woman's grasp—only to have it grabbed again this time by a boy no older than the children that she had kidnapped and locked in a hole with a predator. She felt the slightest shiver of...

Is that regret that you are feeling, Oracle, or is it something else?

Maybe it was something that she couldn't put a name to, but she continued to feel _something_ unsettling rattling at the pit of her stomach as if she could possibly throw up. She hoped that wasn't the case. She couldn't recall eating her last meal. It must have been days ago. And upchucking right now might be particularly unpleasant as a result.

The music still played. Everyone still danced, some of them freelancing while huge numbers of people looked as if they were performing an almost choreographed number as they stepped and spun around and repeated it nearly as one.

The older woman hadn't given up on enticing her. She grabbed her free hand and at long last Serena gave up on distancing herself from either of the stranger's grip. The track changed over to something more to her liking and as fatigued as she had been...she felt her hips and her feet _moving_ to the beat until she discovered her entire body falling into a synchronized rhythm.

Maybe...just maybe Atlanta hadn't been a city too busy to hate.

Maybe it had been a city too busy to hate for _long._

_It is a pause and effect,_ she thought.

She bit back a smile but she could feel it on her face.

She danced.

She still had resources available to her. Perhaps she would use them to find Thomas Pepper and hope that he wasn't among the many ruins that the city had to offer.

Perhaps...in time...he would have her. Perhaps Serena Tennyson didn't have to be alone again. Perhaps she would age like all other human beings aged.

Perhaps she could avoid the prophecy that was witnessed to her when she found herself locked in a holding cell downtown during Deliverance.

Maybe I don't have to give this city to the flames.

She'd been determined to avoid the version of Whirlwind that forces outside of her command wished to unleash on this city and the country at large.

Perhaps it is not too late for me to call back my own flames.

She knew that she would have to spend the rest of her days peering over her shoulder, making sure that the FBI or any reminisce of a House in Chains was not there to subject her to arrest or revenge.

She _could_ survive though. She could flourish.

Serena Tennyson felt her hands being passed around from one person in this large crowd to another and then another and she stopped just long enough to have a private dance with each one. She'd grown dizzy and drunk on the crowd's energy, its good nature and its love.

And then she felt the cold steel of cuffs biting at the skin around her wrist.

After a moment Serena went to her knees after two attempts at escape failed her. She didn't look up at first...she could not. She _would_ not. Finally, she did look skyward and saw three—maybe four uniformed officers peering down at the prize that they had so neatly wrapped up. The officer nearest to her had cuffed her to his own wrist while the woman on the left side of her waist did the same action with her other wrist. Just by chance, she glared back at the huge TV screen they'd been watching minutes earlier—and saw _her_ face taking up most of the screen with the words in smaller print below it saying: Serena Tennyson, leader of Pandora, is wanted for crimes against humanity.

After a moment of hesitation she began to scramble. She pulled against the cuffs but that only managed to force the steel to bite into her wrist and arms further. She screamed in both agonizing pain and grief.

That moment passed.

Serena surprised herself how quickly she had regained her self- control, all those years of training her mind and body to be disciplined were paying dividends. She felt her pulse slowing and her heart was no longer pounding mercilessly in her chest.

A hand full of other uniformed officers moved into the scene and used their own bodies to shield her from the possibility of her being hit by projectiles or even someone bold enough to try and physically confront her. The crowd that was in such a jovial celebratory mood minutes ago was now coming into slow but steady recognition of who just who she really was.

_Is this how my role in all of_ this _ends? Have the flames been telling me tall tales? Is it written for me to exit the game with a simple whimper and not a bang?_

The officers pulled her to her feet. She faintly heard one of the officers read her rights to her. She exhaled deeply and began to march with them towards her unexpected destiny.

It was over.

It was finally all over.

And then she _saw_ it.

An older model car bent the curve without slowing, its wheels straightened with lighting quickness and it began to cut and angel towards where she, the officers and dozens upon dozens were loitering.

Her mind told her to _run_ but her body was slow to react and her cuffed partners were struggling to move themselves away from the car's deadly path.

And just before the car plowed into them—she was struck _first_ at the terrible irony that she, the Oracle, the leader of Pandora was going to be killed by the selfless act of one of her own suicide agents.

If this _was_ her last moment then Serena Tennyson was surprised by what she saw as she heard the screams of the first pedestrians run into and over—and that horrid sound that metal makes as it eats up human flesh.

She didn't see her life flash before her.

She failed to see silhouettes of her dead parents...or even the flames that she'd grown to trust and love rise in front of her.

In her final moments Serena Tennyson saw a vision of Thomas Pepper.

And he was dying as well.
Chapter Twenty Five

Dammit man, I told you if you are patient I will give you Roxanne Sanchez on a silver platter. Listen to me man—no shut up. I told you that she isn't going anywhere. That voice in her head might tell her to run but right now she's wrapped up in a matter of the heart which gives her a screwed up sense of purpose. She ain't leaving the Atlanta city limits any time soon.

-Two unidentified parties speaking on an unsecured cellphone on April 11
Thomas

**Downtown (Street level), 26** th **Day**

He questioned any man who could sleep through the remainder of the night the way that he had done so.

Lucy was _still_ dead. She was very much so. He'd returned to her hotel room just as quickly as he'd abandoned it and found it on the bed where he'd left it. Her body had begun to rid itself of its body fluids. With all of the dead bodies on this floor between here and the elevator a horde of flies had flown in and were buzzing about. Thomas Pepper was thankful that he had wrapped the majority of Lucy's corpse securely before he'd left. _It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless._ He sat on the bed for a second and noted that the air right here didn't smell any better either. The scent of blood and torn flesh and marrow pushed away the scent of anything else.

Thomas took the time to shroud Lucy's remains with the sheet and blanket from the bed to protect her from the pest. Satisfied, he got to his feet, stretching out the soreness from all of last night's tribulations of combat, running and sleeping on the couch in the next room. Instinct kicked in next: He pulled his cell phone out of his pants pocket and exhaled in jubilation when he noticed that he had service once more. Internet access was limited, but he shrugged it off, not upset with the lack of access of that particular luxury at this moment. He didn't need to see what was going on outside of this room to take a wild educated guess. In his mind's eye Thomas could picture hundreds upon hundreds of first responders pouring into the city. Atlanta had suffered through a series of events in a short span of time that this country had never seen before even during wartime: Every event from 411, Deliverance, Rapture to Scar and a moderately severe earthquake had hit this area—

Thomas walked to the bedroom window and saw a series of trees bending in the wake of a strong and prevalent wind gust.

Meteorologists are calling it the Storm of the Century.

If I believed in God then that means I believe in Satan—and that would mean that I believed that the latter was farting on us when we are already hurting the most.

He turned away from the window and found his way back to the bed without realizing that he had moved at all. He shooed a dozen flies away. He looked at the temporary coffin that he'd made for his former lover. He did not cry. There were no tears left to spare. Perhaps he'd grown dispassionate to this world while he slept. Perhaps all the fleeing he'd done from threat after threat and unseen danger to immediate harm over the past night—over the past weeks had robbed him of emotion.

It had already robbed him of so very much.

He used the remote and switched on the TV. Two CNN reporters that he'd seen around and about over the years were on the screen in a live shot street level in an area he couldn't immediately place. They looked fatigued themselves, though experience told him they'd probably been on the air a less than a couple of hours. He recognized the somber look that was weighing their eyelids down. People outside of his business were quick to criticize the media for over dramatization of high profile events. They blamed the media itself for making themselves part of the very stories that they actually covered. He knew these professionals. And Thomas Pepper could more than appreciate the inhumanity that they'd seen overnight. They had every right to be spooked.

The first shot their director showed the viewing audience was a panoramic view of different parts of the city. Atlanta looked like a warzone. What was particularly effective—what one professional could appreciate coming from another in his field—was the network's use of file tape of what these neighborhoods and sectors and streets looked like in the days before the Zero Hour and all the subsequent events including the earthquake occurred. Thomas saw several buildings leveled. And yet, what was particularly disturbing is that he could quickly know that it was a House in Chains' suicide bombers that had done the damage and not mother-nature. Atlanta residents—young and old, rich and poor, black and white, innocent and guilty who had entered churches, schools, gymnasiums and other places of supposed shelter and had died horrid deaths.

Another camera crew had focused a street side shot on the near south side. One reporter walked down a long alley where she scooped up one empty shell casing after the other after the other after the _other_ and put them up screen level so that Thomas and everyone else could see all of them.

And then Thomas Pepper saw something he would not soon forget.

A female reporter saw something just out of camera range that caught her attention. The camera angle switched to the number 3 which was just above her left shoulder. Thomas knew this was one of a director's favorites as to allow the viewing audience to see what the journalist did almost simultaneously. It was a more than effective tool to give viewers the most intimate viewing experience that technology and human instinct could provide.

So Thomas Pepper and everyone else across the country saw what the reporter saw that had drawn her attention almost the same moment she did.

There was one arm hanging out of a dumpster. A stranger helped the reporter lift the heavy lid and all of the viewers saw the connecting body and nearly a dozen more dead people twisted in every direction in that dumpster as well.

The cameraman turned his camera away but not before the audio technician picked up the unmistakable sound of the reporter cursing and throwing up in the streets.

The feed switched to a BREAKING NEWS shot and it proved to Thomas Pepper without any doubt that things could and had gotten considerably _worse._ Fire seemed to be engulfing the Westside of the city off of I20. Thomas' first guess was that this was the result of the lethal combination of a fire from a suicide bombing and these wicked winds thrusting the flames into the heavy wooded areas out there.

And then he heard these same strong winds shaking this foundation at the core.

And then he smelled a burning sensation that was nearly overwhelming.

Although ignoring it was nearly impossibly, Thomas concentrated on what was being shown on the TV now. CNN had switched to some of the telecast from of its sister stations all across the country. He saw hundreds of dead bodies lying on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Triage centers were being overrun and overwhelmed in Harlem and Miami. Displaced refugees from all around the Beltway were camped out outside the gates of the White House in Washington, D.C. Reports of casualties, looting and suicide bombing during the night was being filtering in from Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Houston and countless others. The still photography shots were pouring in from all. The professional shots were telling; the amateur pictures mostly taken on cell phones were far worse: Men of color had been lynched and hung naked from trees in Montgomery. Four white school teachers had been raped and killed by the very students they thought they were protecting in a school house in St Louis. White Supremacist had torched a Mexican restaurant with the owner, every worker and several dozen patrons who had barricaded themselves inside in Glendale. And then he saw the frightening image of residents in Detroit waking up hundreds of yet to be unidentified naked white men and women hung to wooden X's with their throats cut.

Thomas Pepper didn't remember going to his knees and throwing up but there he was. He stabilized his weight as best as he could be squeezing Lucy Burgess foot. She didn't seem to mind. He didn't look up...he didn't _need_ to... he heard could hear the last report as CNN had returned to a local feed once again.

The APD—or what was left of the civil servants who had begun calling themselves Protect and Serve—were confirming the rumored reports that the FBI had discovered the remains of the Circle, the Board, high level Peacekeepers and several civilians inside the dining room of a mansion here in Atlanta.

The cornier was verifying what Protect and Serve already knew—the highest remnants of a House in Chains had committed a mass suicide.

Thomas sprinted out of the hotel room leaving the door opened, the TV playing and Lucy's still dead body behind.

He finally halted his progress when he reached street level for the second time in many days to catch his breath. He slid as silently as a man of his bulk could manage along the hotel's wall. There were tears clouding his vision. He swiped at them angrily. Once he was able to focus on what was in front of him he could see one of downtown's tallest buildings glaring back at him from behind the haze of smoke.

And then he had a thought... _or I being cursed with one of your visions, Serena._

If she were still alive could she would be headquartered in a building just like that one so she could look down and see her handy work. People were suffering because of her. _He_ had suffered because of her.

Someone should make _her_ suffer for her major role in this nationwide catastrophe.

He tried to shake off this uncomfortable—this unwanted sensation that had washed over him the way a thunderstorm rolls in over a city after a hot summer day. _And it is like a heat._ He'd never felt of burning of hate at the core of his being like he had at that moment. He couldn't explain it any better than that.

Thomas did know that he was hungry. He needed food. He looked south. And thankfully he saw almost immediately what he needed and thankfully it wasn't far away. A man and his wife of Middle Eastern descent were handing out soup bowls on a nearby corner. Yes, yes he could smell the food despite the heavy brushfire aromas that nearly drowned out every other smell in the world right now.

The man did not speak English but the warmth in his eyes and the smile on his lips moved mountains—and the _line_ forming on that corner just as importantly. Thomas flashed his own smile when it was his turn to be served. He cooled it enough and spooned it back and forth into his waiting mouth until the delicious meal was gone. He turned to leave...not quite sure where he would go...but spied a crowd of people gathering in front of a nearby restaurant. _I don't want any more trouble. Do you people understand that I don't need anymore—?_

But to his relief, Thomas noticed that this crowd was far from unruly. They were, in fact, surprisingly pleasant as they used the particular landmark to start the line and patiently wait for their turn at breakfast.

Thomas made his way behind where the serving couple was standing, rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and arms—and began to help them serve those who had come in hunger as he had.

After a few minutes the familiar fresh stench of something burning struck Thomas.

He could see the flames forming over one of the building's roof tops from the direction that he'd run from when he first attempted to reach Lucy Burgess and find her alive.

He ran _towards_ the flames.

When he cleared the building that was obstructing his view Thomas saw _it._ And it broke his heart and his spirit all over again.

The church that had housed him when his life was in the most peril along his trip to Lucy's hotel room was consumed with flame.

Once again his mind and his body seemed to be on different planes of existence. He didn't remember someone tackling him along his way to the church's entrance. It had to be someone of considerable size and strength considering his own size and weight. When he finally tore his eyes away from the burning church to finally see his assailant—first in anger then curiosity his body went limp. He was looking into the dark face of the minister who had welcomed him into his church where his congregation would have gladly shunned him otherwise. The older man had tears in his own eyes but he did not loosen his grip on Thomas.

Thomas relaxed himself enough to hold the minister close to his own bosom...and soon found himself crying with the man.

After he had gathered himself enough, Thomas asked the man all of the obvious questions: Who would try and burn his church down? Did they use gasoline or some other form of ignition? Most importantly—was he able to get all of who had come to the church as a source of refuge out in time?

The bald headed minister nodded. Thomas Pepper hoped that the gesture was in response to his last inquiry—

And then both men reacted as they heard a nearby explosion.

Before either of them could fully react or even begin to comment Thomas heard two more nearby blast and turned just in time to see a fourth detonation with his own eyes. Some people hit the ground while others covered their heads not knowing when or where the next pipe bomb would ignite next. Thomas grabbed for his ears as the latest one did its thing to close by for comfort.

A stiff wind caught the flames and pushed them all around until fire engulfed entire street corners in a heartbeat.

_It was Serena's Whirlwind._ Thomas bit his knuckle hard enough to hurt. _The pipe bombs are hers, nothing else makes any sense._

Thomas peered in the distance at the five star hotels that served as one of Atlanta's tallest buildings.

And then he looked down at his ringing cell phone.

"If you are alive, if you get this message in time I need to see your face. You should know where to find me."

The text message was from Serena Tennyson.

He thought as long and as hard as conditions allowed him to. Thomas had entrusted years' worth of Oracle's personal profile to memory and all of that work, all of that study was paying off this morning. Again, if and when Serena had unleashed her long prophesied version of a Whirlwind—Pandora's final act of contempt against this city—she'd want to witness the Dragon's feast from the most panoramic view possible.

_That high rise hotel,_ Thomas mused. _She has to be_ there _._

Thomas' first inkling was to try and reach local authorities...but after his third attempt at dialing them he realized that the lines had gone down again. Either the servers were being been overloaded with calls about these new rounds of explosions or the placement of the bombs themselves targeted city services.

He handed the minister who had befriended him one of his cards and promised to return when he could. And then he ran as fast as his large frame would carry him towards where he could only guess Serena was.

And somewhere along his long run, his allegro, Thomas decided that he would do something that he dreaded far more than watching his father slowly dying from his disease when the son was just a young man.

And between heavy breaths of exhaustion and smoke poisoning his lungs, Thomas decided that he would do something that he dreaded far worse than the memories of his mother abandoning him and his sisters just before his father died.

And after he was bent over and gagging from exhaustion at the footstep of Serena's supposed hotel, Thomas had decided that he would do something that he had dreaded far worse than when he held his press conference and told the world his findings about Pandora and the probable fate of Atlanta's missing children knowing that it would serve as the ignition of this literal firestorm his adapted home city that he loved so much was facing right now.

If Serena Tennyson was in this building—

If he could reach her...

Instinct once again instructed him to look down at his cell phone.

"I can see you. I am in room 1202 if you would like to see me for the last time as well."

Serena Tennyson _was_ in this building.

He _could_ reach her.

Thomas Pepper had decided that he would do the one thing that he most dreaded in the world:

He would find Serena and kill the only woman that he'd ever loved.
Angel

**Georgia Dome (Triage Center), 26** th **Day**

Christopher had told Angel that her husband Seth was here, somewhere, in this gigantic makeshift triage center that the Georgia Dome was serving as.

_Seth is_ alive _. He has been here in Atlanta all along._

Angel's entourage followed within a few steps of her in every turn. Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan, who was now serving as the interim head of the FBI, had assigned one female agent and two more male agents to her since they'd left Stone Mountain and Hugh Keaton's dead remains behind. Christopher told her that she'd better move quickly. Fulton, Cobb and most of the surrounding counties here in Northern Georgia were being placed under Martial Law indefinitely. The President of the United States was due to meet the governor of the state Georgia and the city's mayor here within the next 24 hours.

Overall, the earthquake's impact on casualties in the regional had been held to a minimum. Still, the extensive damage to property and infrastructure made an already hard job of transporting medical personnel and supplies into Metro Atlanta all the more difficult. Officials were far more concerned with the breakout of fires consuming entire blocks of the city from hundreds of unexplained explosions along the perimeter of the city limits.

As for her new found bodyguards, Sheridan told her they were here in part for her protection from retaliation from Serena Tennyson and her Pandora agents for her involvement in the safe recovery of Atlanta's missing children.

_Those children returning to their homes and their parents are the_ lone _reason that I'm not presently placing you under arrest, Doctor._ Sheridan whispered in her ear on the way here.

Angel doubted it—that Serena had the time or the resources to spend on finding her. Pettiness wasn't Oracle's way. _And yet these bombs and fires_ are. Angel hugged herself, suddenly cold. _Had she finally filled her long awaited prophecy and unleashed the Whirlwind on the city._ Everything that woman had done was manipulated or calculated to serve some preordained goal or goals no matter how randomized it seemed.

So Angel had thanked Sheridan kindly for his gestures but warned him at the same time that he, Christopher and any FBI forces available to them had better exhaust any remaining resources to find Serena before she fulfilled these goals.

She politely asked a staff member about the whereabouts of her husband. The woman shook her head _no;_ she'd never worked with a Dr. Seth Dupree. A second staff member, a stout man, hastily excused himself saying he had no time for this right now. Both looked as if they'd worked for hours on end without relief.

Victims of the previous nights' events were still being wheeled into the facility at an alarming rate. Whether they were all local or regional Angel could not readily ascertain. All she _did_ know is that she was at least partially responsible for this mess. _And Sheridan has every right to want me under heavy surveillance._

The Georgia Dome floor was a bustle of activity. Doctors and nurses ran here and about. Angel's personal detail struggled to match her pace even with her damned limp growing more and more pronounced as she tired. She thought it might even be fun to try and ditch them, but chose not to—at least for now.

She finally garnered a young woman's attention who was taking a smoke break in an unauthorized area. One of her escorts flashed his badge at the woman. And Angel vowed not to take no for an answer regardless to the consequences of such a stand.

The woman exhaled smoke through her nose while nodding yes, she knew Dr. Dupree and informed Angel that the surgeon himself had become one of the dome's patents after passing out and suffering a concussion. She used her cigarette to point Angel in the general direction where he would be recovering and Angel began to limp on with her security detail still in tow right behind her.

As she neared the next door Angel actually started running.

The doctor stopped only when she'd reached the section that housed 20 beds nearly side by side in what the duty nurse termed non-life threating injury status. Angel heard her threesome halting their progress behind her. One of the men was cursing beneath his breath; the female agent got close and reminded the doctor that they were here for _her_ protection. How in the hell could they do their jobs effectively if...

Angel ignored the federal agent. She was doing her usual job of pissing off the FBI and doing it well. She scanned the room and the sick people in those beds as best as she could. Angle didn't see her husband in one of them—at least at first glance. She took a long second look and wasn't having any better luck.

What if that nurse had been in error?

What if Seth were on another floor in this facility alone, or hurt, or even dead?

Angel wanted to apologize to him for the way she talked to him before she embarked on this adventure here in Atlanta with the FBI. She figured that he'd come here because of her, he had come to Atlanta to be close to her.

She wanted to tell him that she loved him for it.

Maybe it wasn't too late for her to be a better wife, a better woman.

Maybe she was saving the best of her for last.

Maybe she _could_ come home again.

"Seth..."

She saw him lying in the fifth bed to the left and wondered how she missed seeing him before. She felt tears dropping down wetting her cheeks with his recognition. She'd cried more in the past 24 hours than the last 24 years of her life, but that was okay. It proved that she _was_ human after all.

And if her husband was following a script, Dr. Seth Dupree opened his gray eyes when he heard her crying. She could see him twisting his head around to locate where in the hell he was.

"Angel,"

She got to her husband's side as quickly as the obstacles of the other beds and the working medical personnel allowed her to. She reached over and hugged him gently at first...but it was Seth how squeezed her tightly with all of the love and expectation of a man who thought that he'd lost someone that he loved dearly.

But she knew that it was even more than that.

Angel knew that her husband Seth never had seen her cry before.

"My sweet Angel, I never thought that I would see you again. There were so many times that I thought that you'd...so many times that I wondered if you had...

He didn't finish his thought. Instead he pulled her close to him and they shared a long passionate kiss.

"Are you hurt, Angel?" Seth looked her over, forever the doctor. "Did they hurt you? Did _she_ hurt you?"

Angel wondered if Seth meant the FBI or Pandora when he asked his first question. The second question caused her to arch a brow. He must have been talking about the female agent that Sheridan had assigned to her side right now. There was no possible way that he knew about her issues with Roxanne Sanchez. Anyhow, there was plenty of time to satisfy their curiosity over the others activities since their last meeting later.

"I'm fine, sweetheart." She brushed the gray in his hair and felt the knot there from his fall. "Trust me, Seth, I'm fine. How are you?"

"I'm good, really. How did you find me?"

"Christopher," She smiled and pointed at the FBI Agents with her. "He told me that he saw you here earlier."

Seth looked as if he was searching his memory banks and they were beginning to overflow with recollections that he'd experienced over the past hours.

And then the dark shadow of trepidation looked to consume the Gray Man...but the moment passed as quickly as it came.

_My God, Seth,_ Angel kissed his fingers. _My God what have you seen?_

"I blacked out." He said as quickly as he could manage. "I can remember that much. One of the attending physicians recommended that I rest."

Seth laughed and Angel joined him.

Well, maybe you'll take the doctor's advice this time" Angel said as she felt more tears fall. She ran her fingers along his hairy cheeks and jaw. He had purple bruises there. There were bruises over his left eye and on the side of his neck and head. One mere fall hadn't caused all of this. _What have you been through? Who hurt you?_ Had any of this have to do with his search for her over the past days? The mere thought of the potential truth caused her to ache inside even more.

"I don't know how to apologize to you enough, Seth. I don't know how to say I'm sorry enough for the things that I said to you the last time we quarreled."

Seth shook his head.

"Just know that I love you, Angel." He said. "That fact has only grown stronger since the last time I saw you."

"I know."

Another memory stirred him enough to cause him to sit up. He glanced over her shoulder and saw the FBI Agents and intentionally lowered his tone.

"New friends of yours,"

"More like _old_ ones reincarnated," Angel matched his tone. "It's a long story."

He nodded, said, "My last patient was your friend Christopher Prince's partner, one of them, Agent Tabitha Blue. Do you think your friends could inquire about an update of one of their own?"

"No change," Angel confirmed with the female agent after she'd returned ten minutes later. Seth bit back a smile. Her husband was one of the finest surgeons in this region and even working while nearly exhausted she knew he was more than competent in his duties. "The doctor who assisted you during the procedure complimented you on a wondrous job. Christopher talked with the man personally. He said that you more than save Agent Blue's life, your work guaranteed her a full recovery. That fact was up in the air for much of the procedure."

Seth's look turned sour as if he'd bitten into a lemon.

"I hope that I haven't delayed the inevitable."

Angel hugged his head again.

"You did your very best, Doctor. That is all that any patient could ask of her physician."

He nodded in acknowledgement of the reminder of what they both knew well. And yet his frown returned. Seth was sniffing the room's air.

"What's with the burning smell?" He asked. "I know it's been a faint cloud hanging over the city from the brushfires since I arrived but it's stronger than ever now. Did something rupture during the quake that caused a new round of fires or something?"

Angel only looked over to where a wall blocked any and all views of the city from the belly of the Georgia Dome. _You've done it haven't you, Serena. Goddamn you woman, you've gone and done it._

"The city is burning." Angel told her husband.

" _What,"_ Seth's gray eyebrows rose as his voice had and betrayed the depths of yet another bruise on his chest that Angel failed to see before. "What in the hell do you mean that the city's _burning_?'

Angel stood fully erect and held Seth's hand using his strength to balance her weight against her own mounting fatigue.

"Only a nuclear blast could truly level a city of this size, Seth," She said. "But for all intents and purposes the city's burning. I've heard the mention of hundreds of pipe bombs being detonated around the city's perimeter. We've also experienced wind gust equivalent of a category 2 hurricane over the past 4 to 6 hours. When you combine that lethal amount of explosives and the raw power of mother-nature you get...you get a Whirlwind effect."

"Could it have been more suicide bombers?"

Angel fixed her husband with a hard stare that the female officer standing behind her shared with her. Seth's last words felt more like a statement than a question. And he sounded as if he'd experienced the devastation of Scar not through television or internet but on a far more personal level.

Once again Angel Hicks Dupree wondered what terrors her husband had been exposed to since he'd arrived in Atlanta.

"No, she told him. "I believe that this—all of this is about Serena Tennyson and the vast belief she wields for her Dragon and her flames."

"Oh my God in Heaven," Was all that Seth could manage to say.

Seth attempted to lift himself out of his bed and stand up. Angel didn't fight him. She helped her husband to his feet. The open areas of his gown exposed more blemishes, scars and bruises on his lower back, thighs and calves. From a mere physical sense, he looked as if he'd suffered far worse in this ordeal than even she had. She knew of her husband's past traumatic episodes involving the boast accident and the loss of life as he reached early adulthood. She knew that he was strong but where her husband was at from a mental standpoint she could only guess without a thorough examination. She was as professional with her medical practice as Seth was at his—and professionals didn't _guess_ about such a prognosis. But all she could do was guess at this point.

"I know about Roxane Sanchez," Seth said as a matter of fact. "I know that the two of you had _unique_ relationship that bonded you together the rest of your lives," They watched each other—waited on the other spouse to react to his news.

Angel said, "She's okay. I think that she's okay for the moment. We've spent some time together since you last saw her. We talked through some of our differences. I think it's highly unlikely that we will ever be besties, but I think we reached some level of acceptance of whom the other woman is and where she is coming from when it comes to the unfortunate death of her sister. I respect her, Seth. I can't argue with the decisions that she's made. I can understand them." She saw a reflection of her big brown eyes in his gray ones. She could only guess what Seth and Roxanne were doing together. "I respect _your_ decisions as well, Seth."

"For a time I was angry with you, Angel," Seth said to her. "I was confused about my own feelings. I knew that she wanted to kill you. I did everything that I could to reach you but you wouldn't answer my calls. Like I said, I was confused but I knew that I couldn't hurt you. I wanted to save you."

Angel nodded.

"You wanted to save me from Roxanne—"

"I wanted and still want to save you from _yourself,_ Angel."

She pulled him close again. She closed her eyes and blocked out everyone and everything in this room...and soaked in all of her husband's love like a well overflowing with water.

"I know that you do, Seth. I know that more now than ever before. Even after everything that I've said to you, even after everything that I've done to you—done to _us..._

Seth lovingly placed his index finger on top of her thick lips to silence them.

They embraced and anyone in this room who was uncomfortable with that be damned.

Perhaps Angel could go home again.

Perhaps.
Roxanne

**MLK Memorial Center, 26** th **Day**

She felt the eyes of God watching her in this place.

They weren't, not in a physical sense at the least.

Hundreds of Atlanta residents of all races, creeds and colors had turned, as she had, to the Martin Luther King Memorial Center as a center of refuge, of solitude and for prayer in the hours before Martial Law was to be imposed on the city.

She'd remembered learning in middle school about the great Civil Rights leader and how he'd spoken to a crowd even more packed than this place was today. Roxanne Sanchez hadn't minded the intrusion of all of these other strangers—at least half as much as she would have believed she thought would have.

God's eyes weren't on her, but the glaring of someone seemingly as powerful was.

Victor Castillo had found her.

She was unsure of how she knew...but she _knew_ nonetheless.

Roxanne limped out of the main building as quickly as her cast around her shattered ankle had allowed her. She heard her former lover walking up behind her...and perhaps a second set of heavier footsteps coming up behind her as well. If this man was to kill her she knew that he possessed the means to do so silently and discreetly enough not to disturb the other refugees. It was all that Roxanne Sanchez could wish for now. The other residents had been through so very much. They didn't deserve to be exposed to further violence in the one place where they thought that they'd escape it here—under the roof of a man who spent his life preaching the importance of non-violence to achieve equality.

They followed her into an area that served as a balcony to that you could look east into the heart of the city. The smoke out on the deck was near suffocating levels and Roxanne coughed into her hands. _Time to die;_ and so she spun around quickly to face her executioners at last. She was right when she felt the Victor's presence here. She was also correct when she guessed that his man was one step behind him. All of the events, all of the business of death and living over the past days hadn't dulled her instincts at the least.

Roxanne bit back tears despite the danger and the smoke present. Or at the least she'd convinced herself of such as the first tear threatened to run down her cheek. She cautioned herself against making any sudden movements in Victor's presence. She was unarmed. Even with her injuries she was more than a match against any of the residents foolish enough to attack her in the group below them. Victor and to a lesser extent Gonzales were another matter.

Victor gave their surroundings a once over. He seemed to especially find the statue of Martin Luther King Jr himself interesting. Roxanne felt a sudden bout of shame wash over her. On one hand she didn't want the refugees below to witness yet another murder in this city but an act of senseless violence _here_ in front of a great man's statue felt wrong as well.

"I find it funny that you would seek asylum in a place like this one, Senorita," Victor spoke in his raspy voice at last. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You do like the company of powerful men."

Roxanne felt herself tense at the authority that his voice ushered out even with the simple words he was saying. It amazed her of how much that same voice had comforted her doing their lovemaking frightened her so much now.

"I can't say that it doesn't surprise me as well, Victor." She then acknowledged Gonzales with a curt nod but dared not take her dark eyes off her former lover for long. "Sometimes desperation forces us to search for strength and courage in places where we least expect to find them."

"Perhaps it does at that, but that fact alone won't save you from what's coming now, Senorita." Victor reached into his jacket pocket for his cigar—Roxanne tensed as she'd mistaken the gesture for him reaching for a small gun. He gave the place another long once over and decided that this wasn't the place to share his Cuban experience. "If I in fact have chosen to kill you, _Senorita,_ this place will do as well as any other."

"How did you find me, Victor?"

"The devils, as they say, are in the details. Those details also tend to be long and drawn out." He flashed a curt smile that Roxanne could remember adoring. "But you do deserve an answer. Let's just say that you danced once too often with a devil named Andre Knight of the Carver Street Apartments. He turned out to be an expensive but invaluable asset in finalizing my search."

Roxanne laughed aloud to hide her embarrassment.

"How _could_ he?" Roxanne said as she pounded the smoky air with her fist. She'd held that little bastard when he'd lost his friends in the Peacekeeper's raid on Carver. How could he turn her over to a complete stranger to him? "One of the lasting things that you told me is that trusting people would be my undoing." And Maria had trusted Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree and she'd seen what the price her sister had paid for that trust. "I can't help but wonder how much of a reward he got for selling me out?"

Gonzales grin grew lopsided and disgusting looking. He pulled his jacket back far enough so Roxanne could see the butt of his gun without much effort.

"Don't worry about that, young lady." He said with his heavier Spanish accident shining through. "He asked for $5000 and we paid him every red cent."

Victor took a step towards her. "And then Gonzales here slowly killed him. Your boy died screaming leaving this world much the way I'm sure he did when he was brought into it. I got my refund but I will credit him with being right about one thing: He promised me that you weren't going anywhere anytime soon. Even after you found Agent Prince's step daughter in that dumpster he knew weren't going anywhere."

"I want you to leave Chris out of this." And for the first time Roxanne allowed her voice to slip into her more familiar dangerous tone that matched Victor's own. "This business is our business no one else's."

"I'm glad that you've taken many of my words to heart if not into practice, _Senorita_." He said. "I also taught you that showing mercy would also be your undoing." Roxanne was unsure if Victor's failure to comment on her last words meant that the man she now loved was safe from this former lover or not. She'd only spoken to Chris by phone after Angel sent the help that she promised that she would for her and the other victims of the Marta upheaval. "I'm disappointed that you haven't learned that for yourself by now."

"And what about honor, duty and family," Roxanne asked Victor, but was thinking of Chris all along. She made him a promise that she would return to him when she could— _if_ she could once she settled some old personal matters. He didn't argue. And she guessed that he needed the time to settle his own affairs with the FBI, this Serena Tennyson woman, and A House in Chains, especially after the murder of his brother Xavier. _God, I want so badly to be there for you during this hard time you are facing, Chris._ "Do these virtues mean anything to you, Victor?"

"Family causes us the most grief," Victor answered quickly and honestly. "You know that better than I do, _Senorita_. Duty is always a subjective matter not easily interoperated by the naked eye. And as for honor...well, our kind doesn't serve the most honorable men and women."

Roxanne stood her ground—even on her one good leg.

"Christopher Prince is an honorable man. Serena Tennyson and Pandora spread lies about his relationship with his step daughter to discredit him at a critical moment with their war with A House in Chains and the FBI. They were ready to go on the offensive against the citizens of Atlanta. I was foolish enough to believe these lies...if only for a short time. I redeemed myself by defending Chris and his cause." She cut her eyes at Victor. "But I'm sure that you know most if not all of this already."

Victor nodded but held back a grin.

"I do. What I don't know—what I _want_ to know is this: Do you love him, Roxanne?"

"So you have been keeping even closer tabs on me than I already suspected, Roxanne applauded his efforts. Her mockery echoed off of the nearby stones through the smoky air. Gonzales shifted in his stance tiring of this game of words and innuendo. "How close have you truly been?"

"I've been close enough to smell the dirty stench of Joseph Champion lies every time the man opens his mouth."

Roxanne's dark eyes became slits.

And then a _new_ revelation swam up to the surface in her mind.

"It was you in that black car that chased us down state," She sneered more than said to him. "You tried to kill us."

"No, if I wanted you dead you _would_ be a corpse already." Victor's calm demeanor betrayed no need for deceptions here. He was in complete control and all three of them knew it. "I knew that you were getting some semblance of the truth out of Champion when you left for the state prison, so I thought I'd help you along."

"By chasing my only lead away?"

"I know your instincts for survival, _Senorita_. Yet, your business was with Erica Lovings and her family. Champion, I believe, is involved in something much more profound and dangerous. I think I know a truth about him that you or anyone else in this city only suspect and have yet to fully digest. If you have dove any further into him you would be dead right now, _Senorita_ , and not by my hand."

Roxanne heard the seriousness in his voice and worse than that—she suspected that he was right about Champion. Pride caused her to mask those feeling as best as her dark eyes would allow her. Victor had lost the privilege of seeing her like vulnerable like that long ago. Yet, it made her chest hurt nearly as badly as her ankle to know that she'd expended her time and energy seeking out retributions against Angel instead of staying on a larger threat: Joseph Champion.

How and when did I lose my objectivity? I should have kept this entire episode professional and not let the personal cloud my thinking and my judgement.

And in speaking of the personal—

"You unimaginable bastard," She said but the lack of venom left everyone standing here unconvinced. "Where else have you been tailing me?"

Victor stood with his legs spread apart, enjoying himself.

"I've always thought that funeral were overly dramatic and anticlimactic event, especially for the deaths of people who vastly underachieve in life. I will admit this however, that in this one circumstance, I thought that the burials of Denise Prince and Erica Lovings were a picturesque and dignified service. And then you're extended offer to the Doctor Seth Dupree to actually join you in as a coconspirator in the murder of his own wife is something so diabolical that even I wouldn't have indulged in. You've told me before that you were a monster, _Senorita_. I believe you now more than ever."

"I don't take pride looking back on the many things that I've done, Victor. I can't change the past. I'm going to move forward with whatever time that I have left. I'm not going back to the person that you met in Mexico, or even the woman that you knew that rose as the sun rose this morning. I'm not _ever_ going back."

"You are doomed if you do not, _Senorita_."

Victor went for his cigar once again. He had his lighter out and had a good smoke going. _Just another man and his vices,_ she thought. Gonzales looked almost bored as if rage and confrontation were normal human virtues and conversation and civility were alien concepts he could not understand.

"Perhaps I am doomed, Victor," Roxanne found her voice. "Perhaps I am doomed at that. I've said my peace now. We need to get on with our business at hand. If you are ready to kill me then I am ready to die."

"No, you are _not_ ready," He took a long drag off of the Cuban and played with the smoke. "None of us ever are ready, _Senorita,_ not really."

Roxanne only shrugged at his words.

"I don't understand _this._ You've proven to me as well as yourself that I can't outrun my past, Victor, you've shown me that I can't outrun _you_. I am through running, Victor. Andre told you before he died that I wasn't leaving and he was right. I've been running from one thing or the other my entire life. I'm done _running._ So like I said a minute ago—we have business with each other. You said that I would live just long enough for you to see me suffer."

Victor took a long last pull from his cigar and then stamped the flame out on the post nearest to him.

"And I _have_ seen you suffer," He pulled a pair of shades out of another of his jacket's pockets and shaded his eyes with them and gave her a long last look—and then turned to walk away. He stopped long enough to say: "My chase is over... _Roxanne,_ but you are not through running. You have chosen a path that will keep you running as long as you continue to pursue it...as long as you continue to pursue _him."_

"And what does that supposed to mean, Victor?"

He turned back to face her.

"It means that you never answered my question about your love for Agent Prince? Your non answer told me all the truth that I needed to know. There is darkness within him—and I'm not talking about his skin tone, _Senorita_ —that will keep you running, that will keep you _suffering_ for as long as you are with him. I know the type, _Senorita_ ; I _am_ the type so I damned sure can recognize my brethren when I see it. You deserve better than either one of us could give you, Roxanne."

And then Victor Castillo turned and walked away.

" _What,"_ Gonzales said as exasperation flowed through his Spanish almost making him impossible to understand. "You pursued her all of this way, spared no expense only to walk away from her? Do you remember how much Mexican blood has been spilled because of the actions of this woman?"

Victor stopped walking, removed his shades and fixed Gonzales with a glare that could have melted artic ice.

"She did not heed my words, Gonzales. I did tell her not to dip her hands into cartel business and she persisted nonetheless. I did tell her that someday when the time was right, that we would stop what we were doing and find her." And then Victor turned his attention away from his partner to Roxanne one last time. "I wanted to see you suffer for what you did down below and I have. I wanted to see you suffer before your end—and I have. But I expected to see you at the end of your suffering and not at the _beginning_ of it."

Victor Castillo walked back from the direction where he'd come without looking back at her. Gonzales flashed a momentarily look of confusion at this entire episode and his role in it, buttoned his jacket and mirrored his partner's footsteps as he soon disappeared from Roxanne's sight.

And in the second or third minute of her solitude, Roxanne looked towards the fires that looked to consume much of Downtown Atlanta and wondered what hellfire that Victor had left her alive to face.
Chapter Twenty Six

You believed and acted on the courage of your convictions, Serena.

And I believed in you.

Now, I can only believe that we were both misled.

_-A dying Danielle Rohm whispers in Serena Tennyson's ear on April 26_ th _seconds before her death._
Serena

**Bank of America Plaza, 26** th **Day**

An inferno.

A city burning to the ground.

A whirlwind.

Whatever the media wanted to call it, it was occurring here, now, and there was no way to undo what had been done.

Serena Tennyson watched from her room on the highest floor, the one that Raymond Rice had reserved for long before tonight.

She didn't know how much time she actually had left to watch it all. She had no idea how long before the authorities descended on this hotel and took her away from all that she had labored and sacrificed much in her life to now see manifest itself in front of the one good eye she had left.

She'd lost half her face to bruises and burns when the driver of the runaway car plunged into the crowd when she was still at street level. She was still wearing a single cuff on her left wrist. The other cuff—and the officer attached to it—had been ripped away when the lethal combination of steel and velocity separated them from Oracle. She was still bleeding from her wrist and arm, from a hole ripped in her side and where the flesh itself was torn from the side of her face.

A service worker had approached her when she'd first arrived back at this hotel. He was spewing out warnings that barely calculated in her brain: He was advising her and any other clientele to reenter this place at their own risk. Considering the building's height, the earthquake and now the prevailing hurricane force winds had made the hotel into a risky site to continue to patronize. In the interest of public safety—

And then he truly saw her condition...her _face_ and all of his remaining thoughts and words lost their meaning.

Despite the terrible pain Serena was experiencing she was able to concentrate just enough to take the stairs and return to her headquarters several levels up. She did so without further communication or interference from hotel personnel.

She took several short pained gasp of breath when she reached her room at last. Once again her athletic background in cross country and marathon running had served her well. Her parents would have been proud of her. Her father in particular had loved to watch her perform at the highest level at the meets. _Always finish what you start, Serena,_ he had always instructed her, _just finish what you start and everything else will be fine._

_And I have done just that, Father,_ she would have smiled at self-consciously hearing her father's voice in her ear if only she possessed the lips to manage one.

She stood at one window for the longest time. Serena peered in every direction that the view allowed and then back again as she scanned the horizon. Hundreds of pipe bombs were still detonating in strategic locations throughout the city. The heavy gust of wind were an added bonus that her Whirlwind had not anticipated or needed to succeed. _But I will take it nonetheless._ She watched an area far west of her location...the wind caught the flames just right and merged the bonfire with another and then another wall of flames as it danced along the ground. The dry conditions that had existed for months in this region had been the final component in aiding a firestorm in intensity and size that was more impressive than anything than she could have imagined.

Atlanta was indeed burning.

_No,_ she reminded herself quickly, _it is being purged. It is being cleansed from the inside out._

Serena had seen all of this in the Dragon's flames.

She suddenly felt weak...her stomach...and her knees went wobbly.

Serena went down to a single knee and struggled to get back to her feet, exhaustion—or maybe something far more serious—nearly toppling her. _Not now,_ She threw up then, _not after all of this plotting and planning...not after all of the work that so many others have put in...all of the people who have sacrificed so that the Dragon could feast..._

... _and so that a new stronger Atlanta would rise from the ashes of the old._

When Serena at last pushed herself back to her feet she was amazed how much the same scenery she'd watched before...had changed. The firestorm looked to be burning out of control. This was no longer a _controlled_ burn in her eyes. Closer to the hotels position she watched a family trying—and _dying_ in a futile attempt to save their home from the flames. Two blocks over from there a convoy of firetrucks and the men responsible for operating them were blocked by fallen debris from the storm in one direction and by her Dragon's flames on the other. _They are doomed._ Serena watched another man catch fire just below her. _Fall to the ground you fool,_ she screamed at dying man eternally. _Fall to the ground and roll. It is your only chance of survival—_

" _I said fall to the ground."_

"'He can't hear you, Serena."

Serena spun away from the window with all of the will and energy that she could muster and saw _him_ standing there in the hotel room's doorway alone.

Thomas Pepper was alive.

Serena wanted to approach him. Oracle wanted to run away. Serena wanted to touch his face and see that he was indeed real. Oracle hid her face which had been torn from its skull—and settled on turning back to the window. Only the pleasant side of her face, the one that had existed _before_ was exposed to the intruder.

"You're alive, Thomas. You are alive and got my messages." Serena stood at her full height and clasp her hands behind her back. She would exhibit poise and exercise control no matter how much it pained her. And yet, Serena could see raindrops of fresh blood puddling on the floor by her feet. "Somehow, I knew that you were alive."

Thomas took a cautious step forward into the hotel room and closed the door behind him. Serena took a guarded glance in his direction. Once again Thomas appeared to have come alone—and unarmed. _That doesn't guarantee your safety though. Thomas or any of the hotel staff who have seen you could have contacted the authorities by now._

"My God, Serena," He said to her, daring to touch her uninvited...and he twisted her around just enough to get a full view of her injuries. When she saw him dart his eyes away she instantly knew that they were far worse than even she had imagined them to be. _Most of my enemies and far too many of my allies have called me a monster—how timely that I look like one as well._ "What happened to you? What caused... _this?"_

"An accident," She managed a grin that held no humor, but caused her a new round of eye popping pain. Danielle Rohm, her dear dead Danielle Rohm had taught her to smile, but the _pain... "_ In truth, it really no longer matters now does it, Thomas? It's over now. It's almost over now."

"How can it _not_ be over, Serena," Thomas pulled her close until the two of them were nearly nose to nose. Until her near rape at the hands of the guard in her holding cell before Rapture she had never been this close to a man before. "It is already at an end, Serena. What else could there possibly be left for you to do here?"

She did not answer right away. She stood there wrapped in his arms wishing that he would let her free...and simultaneously hoping he would not.

He finally did release her. She turned back to the window to witness a Whirlwind in all of its preordained glory.

And she turned away so Thomas Pepper would not see her tears burning in her eyes.

Look at what you've done.

She saw more firestorm and destruction in a Whirlwind's wake.

She saw death and rebirth.

She saw prophecy and metaphor.

And she saw men and women and even little children reaching their end. And when that it was as terrible as they had all had imagined it would be. She watched as numbers of them were given to the flames.

Serena Tennyson thought she was looking out of her window in Hell itself.

And then she saw the devil who ruled there, but not the Dragon who had been promised to her...it was her _own_ reflection that had glared back at her.

_Oh my God,_ she thought, but she had never believed in _their_ God had she? How could she call his name?

She yanked out the firearm that she'd taken off of the dead officer who had been cuffed to her. Thomas backed away from her—and then ducked for cover as she fired several rounds into the glass until it shattered into several thousands of pieces. She heaved back and tossed the weapon out of the opened window. She screamed then as the smoky air burned her exposed nostrils and windpipe. _My lungs are on fire._

"I had hoped that this would all end peacefully," Serena managed to say after a time. Thomas had finally risen up from behind his cover. She could hear sirens below...and hear her name specifically and the many curses that followed as the men exited those vehicles. "No matter what else that I've done here in this city, I want you to believe me when I tell you this."

" _Stop it,_ " Thomas screamed at her. He slowly rose to his feet again. And then he was standing over her again and she found herself sliding away from him. He pointed a thick finger at the space that the window once occupied. "Don't you dare try and justify this carnage to me, Serena."

"I petitioned for peace, Thomas. I fought for it with every fiber of my being. But there were too many adversaries in my path. Xavier Prince and a House in Chains wouldn't hear of it. The FBI was just competent enough to delay me. And Thomas-- _Thomas_ there are forces within Pandora not under my command who are attempting to piece together a future far dimmer than the ideals and the vision that Isaac Prince passed down to me. They are going to commit a gen—

"Then you should have fought _harder,_ Serena." Each word the man said stung at her heart with more bile than the word before it. And then, as if his time of rage had passed, his tone lost much of his gruffness and it was if Thomas' entire body went limp. "You should have pushed your people and _theirs_ for more concessions. You should have done something," Thomas looked over the window sill out into a Whirlwind. "You damned well should have done something to avoid this."

Thomas joined her as they both turned away from the window. She could feel his closeness and did not move away from it. Serena wished that he would hold her. She never felt more alone than she did right now: She didn't feel this kind of loneliness when her parents died...she didn't feel this type of loneliness when either Raymond Rice or Danielle Rohm were killed...

Serena Tennyson had betrayed the Dragon's love.

She was indeed alone.

And she wished more than ever that Thomas Pepper would hold her...before her own end.

Serena heard his breathing ease. His anger was soothing. And then he must have felt her hands quivering. _It's suddenly as if the world has gone cold._ To his credit—Thomas squeezed her hand that was still hole and true. She squeezed his thick fingers and did not let go.

She did not let go.

"Before _they_ come for me I need to tell you about a vision that I recently had. I want to tell you about a vision that _you_ were an integral part of."

And so she did. And when the tale had completed itself he said: "I can certainly believe that you thought that it was real, Serena. I know that you felt that it was. But ultimately, I believe that your visions as you see them are nothing but dreams. I think that your prophecies are little more than metaphors." He took a deep breath but she did not interrupt. "Your own self-conscious knew of what your conscious self was capable of. The option of _turning away_ was a conflict of character from within. I guess my role as the genesis of the speaker for yourself conscious came from the time we spent together in my townhouse, nothing more—"

Dozens of pipe bombs exploded in rapid succession as an angry wind simultaneously blew in. Thomas slid down the wall screaming in anguish as he freed Serena's hand.

And yet it was she that found her voice first.

"What have I done, Thomas?" A single tear burned her eyelids as it ran down her exposed flesh. "What have I done?"

Thomas sat there and gnawed at his balled up fist.

"You have made some grave errors in judgement, Serena," Thomas Pepper said. He found enough of his own strength and dignity to rise to his full height. "But you were not alone. The Prince Brothers, the FBI, _all of us_ involved in this have made terrible mistakes, Serena. Many lives have been lost as a result. I wish that I could put on a single reason why that came to be."

"We were misled," Serena said simply.

"What do you mean?"

"Once, a friend of mine told me with her last dying words something that I will always remember," She heard herself say. "And she told me something that I will never _forget_."

"Tell me," Thomas urged her to continue.

"I will always remember her telling me that your God...that _our God_ forgives us no matter how severe our sins if we submit ourselves to his will and ask forgiveness."

"I believe that as well, Serena." Thomas darted his eyes away again. "Although I have not spoken to _Him_ in a great number of years."

"But even more, I will never forget what she told after that. She told me that she truly believed that her lord was working through _me._ And then she told me..." Serena no longer hid her tears from Thomas Pepper. "In her very last breath Danielle Rohm told me that she'd been misled."

Both of them paid heed to the dozens upon dozens of heavy footsteps marching on the floor towards the hotel's room door.

The FBI wasted little time bursting in and slid to their knees and finding cover as they entered.

Special Agent Christopher Prince had taken the point.

Serena Tennyson released Thomas Pepper's hand quickly as she found the will and the way to slide to her knees as quickly as Prince ordered her to. She could see out of the corner of her eye as the large silhouette of Thomas as he obeyed the order as well. _We are caught in a time loop, Thomas. We are at your place again before my Rapture—before Tempest Rising, before the Whirlwind consumed Atlanta with its hunger._

Agent Prince barked instructions out to the other agents to secure Thomas as he was not to be considered a combatant at this time. All of the remaining agents—too many for Serena to count—surrounded her and closed in step by step. _All of my past charades have caught up to me at last._ And yet, the mere thought of her sore, aching wrist suffering though a new round of being shackled caused her to slide back as far as the wall would allow her to.

They twisted her body until her lips kissed the floor beneath her as they cuffed her once again over her body's vibrant objections.

Thomas protested.

Serena screamed.

They stood her up quickly and Serena found herself facing out of the window one final time at a Whirlwind feasting on the countryside as far and as wide as her one good eye could see as Agent Christopher Prince read her rights to her once again.

It was glorious indeed.

It was haunting for sure.

The long prophesized Dragon had taken flight had feasted on the impurity of those below...but where the resurrection and order that was promised to her was.

Danielle Rohm had paid a terrible price for being misled. What price would _she_ pay?

And as the agents walked her towards the hotel's door and her pending destiny—she learned that the Dragon had not forsaken her completely as the flames had provided her one final vision:

Serena Tennyson saw her _own_ face in the flames and then the Dragon's betrayal was at last complete.

And then her flames extinguished themselves forever and the world went dark and cold. She could no longer see and she felt herself began to tremble.

Serena's death was mere heartbeats away and it was nothing left she could do to prevent it from happening.
Thomas

**Bank of America Plaza, 26** th **Day**

"Relax, Serena," Thomas Pepper watched Agent Nicholas Sheridan step towards Serena Tennyson who had escaped, at least momentarily, from the agents who had her in custody. She had dove towards the ledge where she'd shot out the window earlier. Several agents had drawn their guns but Agent Christopher Prince had instructed everyone in the room to hold their fire.

Sheridan held up a hand for peace: "I want you to listen to what Mr. Pepper has said, Serena and I want you to listen what _I_ am saying _._ These men are not executioners. I will not sanction that sort uncivilized behavior here. Our job is to bring you to justice in a manner that protects you and my people. Your fate is to be decided by a jury of your peers. Do you understand me, Serena?"

"Forgive me, Agent Sheridan, if I am not comforted by your words." She leaned over the ledge further and Thomas gasped in horror. Every gun in the room was drawn on her, every safety lifted. "I saw Hugh Keaton's demise myself on TV or should I just ignore how he was brought to your justice?"

Thomas shook off the agents holding him back and took a step forward. He could see Agent Prince shaking his head in a dangerous manner, but he did not most of his focus of a Pandora's field leader.

"What happened to Keaton was unfortunate, Serena, but I want you to remember that those were an independent party out of my chain of command. And we also had an outside source of the media which contributed to his demise. Those factors don't exist _here."_ Sheridan gave the room and Prince's room a once over. Thomas knew the seriousness and the volatility of this situation. Everyone in this room, including Thomas himself, had lost someone to Serena's schemes and treachery. Two police helicopters could be heard...and then Thomas could see them as they clearly came into view. Serena looked as if she heard the birds as well—but she looked as if she were struggling to see where they were at all. _Serena's condition has worsened. My God, I think she has gone blind._

"Serena, do not panic, _do you hear me?_ " Sheridan shouted to be heard over the already blistering wind shears being stirred up worse by the twins' thundering blades. "Those birds are _mine._ They are under _my_ command. I am in command of every man and woman in this room. I know what happened to Hugh Keaton. I was informed of what nearly befell you in that holding cell while in the custody of the APD. I give you my word that you will leave this room _alive._ I also give you my word that you will make it to trial alive and unharmed. But I do need your help. I need you to surrender peacefully and without further incident right _now_."

Serena looked in the general direction of where the copters should have been. They hovered nearby but never penetrated past a certain barrier. Thomas had no doubt that Sheridan meant every word that he said.

But _he_ was not the one that Sheridan had to convince.

And Sheridan's men—including Agent Prince had Serena's spectacular escape from that same Atlanta courthouse that she was nearly raped at. Each of these men and women would also remember the deaths of each and every death that was caused at his townhouse by the mines that were laid on the path there at her instruction. _They weren't privy to the conversations that you and I just had, Serena. They didn't see your remorse._ And if they needed any further reminders of who Serena Tennyson _was_ what she had been about before—all they needed to do was look past those helicopters out there and look the hellfire that she ignited.

"Step back off that ledge, Serena." Sheridan said to her in a lower tone. He frowned with his bushy brows, frustrated, flustered...and then turned to the one _woman_ who could possibly bring this all back from the brink.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree had entered the room.

"Serena," She stepped in the room and moved past a gathering of agents and then pushed past Chris Prince until she was standing next to Agent Sheridan. "I heard what you said. I heard you when you mentioned Hugh Keaton. I know that you know that I was there with him at the end. He fought all of his demons so that those boys that he had put in so much danger would survive. He was very brave in the face of so much uncertainty." Angel eyed Sheridan, he caught her meaning and he silently gave her the okay to take the lead here. "You relish _control_ above all things, Serena. I know that you are hurting. I also believe that for the first time in your life you are truly afraid. I want you to use your control to aid you in getting through this."

"I...I don't want to die here, Angel."

"If you truly believe that your path was the _righteous_ one then you should live long enough to defend your actions in a court of law." Thomas could hear Agent Prince grown at the mere thought of such a thing. "I know that you and your enemies have ordered all types of unforgivable actions from those who have served under your causes. But I know that you truly believe that suicide is a coward's weapon. You are many things, Serena Tennyson, but you are no coward."

Serena shook his head as the tears freely fell.

Sheridan said into the silence: "This has been stressful on everyone here. We have all sacrificed a great deal to get to this moment right here, right now."

"We have at that, Agent Sheridan," Serena said in a shaky voice. "And we all have sacrificed so much, _too_ much in fact. And you are right as well, Angel, I do have much to answer for. And I do have a story that needs to be told."

And then Thomas watched Agent Prince raise his gun and step forward.

"And the first story that all of these good men and women want to hear is who is the Caretaker?"

"Agent Prince," Sheridan said in a stern tone. "Stand down, Agent Prince, what are you _doing?"_

He didn't answer Sheridan. Instead, Prince positioned himself so that no one could wedge themselves between himself and Serena. The other agents tensed at the new development and trained their full attention and their guns on her as well. Sheridan was seething. Dr. Hicks Dupree was hugging herself. Thomas felt at his heart would pound its way through his chest and surface itself.

"I want her to _say it_ in front of this room full of people well before she gets to court, Sheridan." Chris said. "I want the world to hear it from her mouth right _now_ before the courts and the judges and the lawyers get involved. Thousands of people have died over the past month because of this one question has gone unanswered for so long. Tell these people what you told me, Serena."

"Agent Prince, lower your weapon _right now. That is an order."_ And then Thomas saw Sheridan react as he watched Serena lower her head. And somehow Sheridan _knew_ the answer that apparently Agent Prince had already learned from Serena.

"Isaac Prince," Serena said evenly. "Your deputy director Raymond Rice was not the only high level authorities' figure who commanded Pandora's ranks.

All of the air seemed to leave Thomas Pepper...and everyone else within earshot. Most in the hotel did not know Isaac Prince personally, but they knew him as the founder of a House in Chains. They _all_ recognized the name. He must have been Chris and Xavier Prince's father.

"The Caretaker and Isaac Prince _are_ one."

Thomas watched Agent Prince mostly. As dumbfounded as he was, Thomas could only guess at how devastating this revelation was for the man nearly standing in front of him. The born investigator in Thomas had to admit that he'd considered the possibility once or twice...but he had always steered away from it being absolute. No matter how logical or reasonable this conclusion may have played out...the truth of Isaac Prince consciously handing his _own_ son over to a known pedophile was a fact not bred in reality. Thomas own mother leaving her children as his father lay dying was terrible enough—

Dr. Dupree's own anger at her friend's unexpected belligerence was melting off of her face. She looked as if she wanted to drop everything and go to Agent Prince and comfort him. Serena had yet to look up. Thomas had studied this woman and her organization for years—and yet they were far and away more ruthless and calculating than he had ever given them credit for.

Sheridan had recovered from whatever emotions he was feeling. He stepped over to where his subordinate was standing. He put his hand over the top of Agent Prince's and lowered both hand and gun in one motion. Working together Sheridan came out of the exchange with Prince's gun in his hand. He turned his attention to Serena and offered his other free one to Serena to step away from the ledge.

She struggled to find it...but eventually she took his hand in her own.

As she stepped down, Sheridan cuffed her hands behind her back with as much human grace, dignity, and compassion as he could manage.

He began to walk her past Agent Prince, but she halted her progress when she thought she was near where he was standing. The torn side of her face was the one visible to Thomas.

"I appreciate your restraint, Chris," She said to him.

"Go to Hell, Serena,"

Serena tossed a blind look to where she guessed Thomas was standing. And then she turned back to Agent Prince.

"That chapter has already been written." She refused to budge when Sheridan tried to get her moving again. "Your chapter has been written as well, Chris, but not in the script that you may have been nudged into believing."

"Do you _ever_ shut that mouth of yours, Serena?" Thomas was amazed that a man with such clear, dark skin could nearly turn a shade of red when angered. "What in the hell are you talking about now?"

"Your medical exam reports from a recent physical that you have taken," Serena said patiently. "They were exaggerated...bogus...inaccurate. You may choose to use whatever terminology that you wish."

"But my personal physician said—"

"You doctor said what he was _instructed_ to say under constant stress and threat to his personal safety and that of his immediate family. Your mother's illness and eventual demise was a far too convenient resource for me not to use at the appropriate time. In the end though, it was _her_ disease alone and not yours."

Thomas winced at Serena's latest revelation. He stepped behind Sheridan as if this trained government law enforcement worker might need his help in restraining Agent Prince. Sheridan kept his look neutral as he forced Serena's momentum forward.

"With the exception of the need to drop a few pounds, Agent Prince, you are as healthy as anyone else in this room." She said as Sheridan pushed her through the door with his armed one armed contingency giving them over to another.

Thomas saw Chris biting back tears of what? Were they...were they tears of joy...were they tears of anger...

Thomas followed Sheridan and Serena out of the door as close as the federal agents would allow him to. Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree was even closer to Sheridan and his prisoner.

"I consider you my equal in every way, Doctor," Thomas was unsure of how Serena knew that the other woman was marching with them. "In fact, for a short time I thought that you were my sister in arms, I thought you were my other wing that the Dragon had promised to reveal to me. You should have been. You were the one who could have aided Pandora to a glorious victory. With you at my side we could have avoided all of these unfortunate casualties. We could have avoided this Whirlwind that has been unleashed on the city of Atlanta."

"I'm not like you, Serena," Angel said, but she continued to hug herself. "I'm nothing like you at all."

"Oh yes you are, Doctor and you and I both know this to be true," Serena said as they approached the first flight of stairs on the long route to street level. "But that is not the reason that I pity you...Angel."

"You feel pity for me?"

"Oh yes, Doctor. I don't have any other word for the tribulation that you are now going to face. I have been lonely, Doctor. I _know_ what it feels like. And I know that the only thing in the world that you are afraid of is experiencing that loneliness. And yet, you are headed for a season of solitude like no other, a loneliness that will have you begging my flames to take you from your suffering."

And then they left a stunned and visibly shaken Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree on that floor while they moved on.

On the ground level at last, Sheridan turned Serena over to yet another group of well-armed men who placed her in the back of a nondescript looking van of no color. There were two agents seated on either side of her, a driver, another agent with his gun pointed at her from the front seat and one last agent seated on the passenger side carrying a radio. He spoke into it as the both the side and back doors bolted in place behind them with audible _clicks_.

Sheridan shadowed the entire operation _and_ Thomas Pepper from two steps behind him. The FBI agent looked at Thomas for a full minute and nodded at him once...but the larger man caught multiple messages in Sheridan's simplest of gestures. He thought it said: _You have been helpful to my agency that I serve and a country that I love, Mr. Pepper. I don't quite understand the nature of your relationship with Serena Tennyson—I don't think that I_ want _to know. It may have taken my people hours more to find her on our own. Your phone call to us telling us where she was may have saved lives today. You deserve a_ moment _to say your goodbye to her._

And then Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan took one more step back into the shadows of the hotel. It was all the privacy that the two of them would be allowed.

Thomas thought that it would be enough.

"I don't love you, Thomas," Serena said to him softly and without preamble. "I can't. I don't know that I am capable of exhibiting that kind of emotion."

Thomas nodded.

"I know, Serena. You don't have to explain.to me. I'm unsure of what my true feelings are for you either." He heard the hesitation in his own voice. "I came here to your hotel with the intention of somehow, someway...killing you for all of the pain that you've caused."

"I know, Thomas. I saw your feelings in my flames as well. Your _moment_ passed. Like I said before, I'm not sure what to call the feelings that I carry inside for you. But for the first time in my life...for the first time I felt _something_ that was not a fraternal love for men like Isaac Prince, Raymond Rice or my father of course. And then Danielle Rohm taught me what it was like to have a sister." Serena paused in thought. "Perhaps that is why this final goodbye that we are sharing feels so sad to me."

"I'm going to see you often over the next few months, Serena." Thomas reminded her of her coming trial. He tried his best to concentrate on the beautiful woman that the right side of Serena Tennyson's face that still showed through—but the other side would not be ignored...

"There won't be a trial, Thomas." She said after a long silence that stirred Thomas heartstrings and tested Sheridan's patience, even at a distance. "I've seen it in the flames. I won't live long enough to see justice prevail. More importantly to me, right now, I'm going to die without ever feeling what romantic love is like. I want that now more than anything else in the world, Thomas. I wish I could have had that with... _you."_

Thomas heard the agent sitting on the passenger side of the van speak into his radio and heard the engine fire up as a response to whatever was said to him.

" _Serena,"_ Sheridan spoke up over the van's engine and the helicopters that had renewed their presence on the scene. Thomas watched as six more vans that looked just like the one in front of him took their place on the next street. Thomas got the plan at once. Three of the cars would be placed in front of the one escorting Serena, while three would be set behind it. " _Once again, you have my word that you will be protected every step of the way in the coming process."_

The officer carrying the radio said: "Agent Sheridan, the prisoner's escort convoy is ready and at your disposal, sir."

"Very well," Sheridan pulled Thomas aside so that he wouldn't be threatened by the onslaught on vehicles that were passing him at a rapid pace. Something caused Thomas to look skyward—and he saw snipers snapping to attention atop three adjacent buildings as well. In his mind's eye he imagined them lining the rooftops all along the route to the courthouse. Thomas willed himself to believe that Serena's anxiety was just that, anxiety with little substance to support her claims of imminent danger comforted him at least. "I will be in car four. Mr. Pepper, if you will join me, I will need you to make an official statement for the record."

Thomas nodded automatically.

"Of course, Agent Sheridan,"

The helicopters took their own strategic positions around the caravan as well. And then Thomas saw Agent Christopher Prince and Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree step out from the stairwell of the hotel. The doctor had her arms wrapped around her friend's torso and he guessed that she was whispering her own words of comfort and support to him as he had to Serena moments earlier.

Serena's van began inching forward slowly and Serena was asked to sit back in the seat that had been assigned to her.

"I'm asking your forgiveness for my sins, Thomas," And then she said louder a voice so that all who occupied the area would hear her clearly. " _I am asking you_ all _to forgive me for my sins. I won't live long enough to pay for them by your definition of justice. I've seen it in the flames—"_

" _I forgive you, Serena,"_ Thomas wasn't sure why he said it. He was even _more_ unsure when he heard himself say it again.

On the main street, Thomas could see the first three cars of the caravan starting up. Serena's van had some catching up to do to match their speed and make up the distance—

" _I'm going to die, Thomas,"_ Serena screamed. He could hear her crying now. " _I don't want to die, Thomas—and I don't want_ you _to die either—"_

Serena's van straightened itself into traffic and Thomas watched the wheels turn right ever so slightly as it began to bend the corner. Serena's pleas for mercy drew down in volume as the van drove out of range—

And then the van _exploded._

And the fireball licked one of the two helicopters that was hovering above the way a lizard would welcome an unrespecting fly to be the honored guest to dinner.

The eruption knocked Thomas Pepper and everyone who was previously standing on the street down to the ground.

No—no—no—no—no—no--

There was a moment of uncertainty...a second moment of sincere madness... and a last moment of mad confusion until Thomas Pepper saw dozens upon dozens of agents approaching the fireball from all sides. Agent Christopher Prince was one of the first people on the scene standing as close to this massacre as insanity would allow. Angel limped as fast as her diseased left leg let her—until it failed her at last and she ungraciously tumbled back to the ground from which she came. Agent Nicholas Sheridan lost it: He pulled out his gun and the one he'd extracted from Agent Prince inside Serena's hotel room and unleashed a barge of bullets into the smoky air above until both clips were empty. The copter that had barely escaped the fireball circled back and forth over the wreckage of van and its dead sister.

Thomas Pepper didn't move.

He _couldn't_ move.

All of his extremities had gone numb and were unresponsive. He wished his feet to walk and they would not.

But he knew what _was_ working just fine indeed.

Thomas could feel the hot tears running down his face, he could feel the snot spilling out of his nose.

But what he crying simply for her—or was he desperate to know if her prognosis she'd revealed to him with her last breath was true.

And he could hear his voice...oh yes, he could hear the words, however faint, coming from out of his mouth slow and repetitious.

" _I forgive you, Serena...I forgive you...I forgive...I..."_
Episode 9 Whirlwind

Chapter Twenty Seven

I shadowed our dad's footstep because I admired him and wanted to expand on the legacy that he'd built in the Black community, Chris. I also followed him because you wouldn't.

-Xavier Prince in a deleted text to his brother Chris before he was sentenced to Calhoun Prison.
Angel

Congressional Hearing Room 45; Washington, D.C., October 2011

Justice Price called Special Agent Nicholas Sheridan to the podium for the last time.

The Congressional Hearing Room here at the Department of Justice here in Washington D.C. had been slow to warm, mirroring the mid-morning October day outside in the nation's capital. Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree blew her hot breath into her hands for the third time in as minutes for warmth. It didn't seem to be helping. She watched Sheridan rise from his seat in the first row of the galley and take his short, but yet, long trek to the witness stand. He was wearing his best black suit with matching tie and shoes. He looked to be even more business minded than usual. He still had a nice ass. Angel noted that his hair looked even more gray than when he'd first come to recruit her inside that coffee house all of those months ago in Macon. _And this_ _promotion will likely bald it within five years_. Sheridan's wife looked so proud. The woman's smile lit up what was an otherwise clean, but bland chamber of coffee colored desks and chairs and portraits presidents long dead or voted out of office.

Christopher Prince was seated three rows behind her, just near enough to observe the proceedings without straining to see the specifics. She couldn't quite read what her childhood friend was thinking and that fact troubled her some. She'd always had been able to gauge his moods before, but he'd been a tough read since that night that Serena Tennyson had died in a fireball of one of her own pipe bombs as her vision of a Whirlwind had come to a fiery close. Something in him had died as well apparently and that had been a good thing. Christopher looked like a man who had emerged from a shell as man reborn. He'd dropped all of the extra baggage around his midsection, but had gained width in his arms and legs while his chest looked chiseled. She wouldn't have believed the transformation if she had not witnessed the process of diet, exercise and—force of will for herself.

Agent Tabitha Blue's overbite was in full bloom this morning as she looked as happy as if she were Sheridan's kid sister accompanying him to a sports banquet as he received an award for player of the year. Angel found herself smiling at her, just a bit. On the surface at least, Blue looked as if she'd recovered from her injuries that she'd suffered during one of those nights of horror than no one involved in this room would ever forget. _But I wonder where you are underneath that smile...that jovial mask that you wear so well, Agent Blue._

The entire Justice Department had attended the ceremony. Angel decided that they probably had little say so in that regard. Considering that the last appointed Director of the FBI, Raymond Rice, had succumb to the temptations of Pandora and the fantasies of a new world order...this appointment, this transition of power within the bureau was now the most important nomination in the history of its existence since its founding.

"Nicholas Andrew Sheridan you should raise your right hand," Justice Price said aloud for the entire room to hear.

Sheridan did so and for the first time this morning, he couldn't fight off the smile that was creeping on his face weathered but handsome face. Justice Price struggled to bite back a similar grin that had fallen on her wrinkled mouth as well.

"Now you've got to behave, Nicholas, if we're going to get through this proceeding before lunch." She said and the entire galley broke into a hardy laugh and then light applause. She gave everyone a chance to settle back down and read her lines to him without looking once at the prompter.

The new Deputy Director of the FBI accepted his new title and all the responsibilities that accompanied it when she had finished her spill at last.

"Congratulations," They shook hands and Angel heard the firm but polite applause begins yet again.

"Thank you, Justice Price," Sheridan said to her just loud enough to be heard over the dwindling applause. "It is my honor to serve both this department and the people of this country for which I love with all of my heart and soul."

The clapping amplified itself in volume and intensity with his words as the sound echoed off of the chamber's walls.

Deputy Director Sheridan addressed the media that was waiting like starving vultures in a nearby press room. He gave a prepared opening declaration and made himself available for a short Q&A and issued a closing statement and walked off without looking back. 45 minutes had passed when Sheridan joined Justice Price and a hand full of her colleagues who had stayed behind in an adjacent conference room awaiting his arrival. Agents Christopher Prince and Tabitha Blue had been invited to the short meeting—as was Dr. Angel Hicks-Dupree.

Justice Price:

She was nearing 60 years old. If she were an automobile then she would have had the body of an older body Buick, but would have been carrying a Camaro's new engine underneath the hood. She sat her butt on the edge of one of the tables, smoothed out her skirt, and let everyone else settle in where they may. She ran her hand through her short but stylish haircut once before she issued her own opening statement to those left behind to hear it.

"Now that the media show is over and done with my friends and I wanted to meet with you, Sheridan, on a more intimate level. We had a couple of specific questions for you and those who had served directly under your command during all that madness that went down in Atlanta in the spring."

"Of course, Justice," Sheridan couldn't help but arch a bushy gray brow of curiosity. She could feel her own curved brow rising in anticipation as well. _Now this should be entertaining_. "How could I be of service?"

Justice Price exhaled audibly and then put her thoughts to words.

"You should know this already, Sheridan, but I will remind you that your first few months—likely your first year on this gig won't be very pleasant."

"I'm sure they won't be, Justice," Sheridan nodded at her. "There are far too many questions that have gone unanswered post 411. Even in the months that I've served in this position in an unofficial capacity, we haven't learned enough about the variables from many sides in the days and months that preceded the attacks. I want to assure you that I won't rest until this agency provides detailed specifications—and more importantly names of those who were and still are involved with Pandora. I'm going to follow that trail to whatever end it leads me. You have my word on that."

"My colleagues and I have every confidence that you will." Justice Price looked back at the empty expressions of her colleagues that said otherwise.

One of the two men, a second Justice that Angel knew as Frank Berry stepped in front of Price with his glasses hanging over his nose.

"Forgive me, Mr. Sheridan for being blunt," He said without preamble. "I'm not as forgiving as Justice Price apparently is in this matter. Don't get me wrong on this, Sheridan; your service record proves that you are as qualified as they come to be the Deputy Director of the FBI, at least on paper. But I want to remind you that you only garnered just enough votes to barely attain this position over a few other candidates who are likely as qualified—at least in somebody's estimation. Doubters and skeptics exist because of some of the decisions that you made during the critical final hours of that disorder down in that Godforsaken city in northern Georgia. "I'm one of those skeptical people, Sheridan."

"With all due respect, Justice Berry, is there a specific question that you have here for me this morning?" Sheridan asked the man.

"Questions... I have too many of them and not enough time to air them all, Sheridan." He replied and pushed his glasses up on his face. "All I want now is an overview of where would you begin to provide the answers to the difficult questions that your countrymen are asking about those dark hours?"

Sheridan turned to where Angel was standing.

"Dr. Hicks Dupree's earlier testimony brought the severity of our agency's dysfunction—all of the country's agency's dysfunction that Pandora preyed upon into a new light that, believe me, was far from flattering."

"I've read those transcripts twice, Sheridan. I'm sure our friends here are interested in _your_ interpretations of what those records state," Price said.

Sheridan used the seconds that he pulled his suit jacket to its proper length to organize his thoughts for a proper answer.

"We're all aware that in some capacity or form that an isolated number of former FBI Agents and those from sister agencies aided in the planning and execution of the 411 attacks and the subsequent actions in and around Atlanta in the days and weeks after. In so many words, Justice Price, we are a government institution, so that means that the American taxpayer himself aided in these engagements. I want these individuals brought to justice—if you'll pardon the pun, madam. These men and women are the epithet of the worst type of traitor. And I want each and every one of them arrested and tried for treasonous crimes against this country."

Justice Berry flashed his two colleagues that had marched in with him a look and then he turned his attention back to the new deputy director.

"We want that as well, Sheridan. I hear the pain and the sense of urgency in your voice. I believe that both are sincere. Yet, I haven't heard any specifics on how you are to accomplish this monumental task that we have laid at your feet. I'm sure that everyone in this room knows that a House in Chains has a major rally planned in Atlanta for later this evening. Despite that mass suicide involving many of the vital components of the head of the snake, the _body_ indeed slithers on. I have no doubt that in some deep dark corner that the remnants of Pandora are or have already done something similar."

"I wasn't quite finished, sir." Sheridan cleared his throat. "Today I'm going to appoint a reclaiming czar whose sole purpose— outside of eating and breathing— is to find each and every man and woman who was involved and yank them by their privates from under whatever rock they may have be hiding under. We start this process by debriefing each and every current member of this bureau. The metaphor we use goes as follows: We sweep the barber shops and hair salons with one giant comb—meaning we get into the professional and private lives of our own people's activities over the past few years— and we examine each and every strand we have down to its DNA coding."

Justice Price stepped past Berry and shook Sheridan's hand again.

"I don't envy you this task, Sheridan. This sounds like a monumental undertaking you have ahead of you. It also sounds as if this so called czar of yours has much work ahead of him."

"And much to answer for if he fails to produce results in a timely manner," Berry added his last piece before this jigsaw puzzle of conversation was finished at last.

" _She_ won't fail," Sheridan stepped away from the Justices as they passed and planted a firm hand on Agent Tabitha Blue's narrow shoulder. "I don't see any reason why we shouldn't do this right now. Justices, allow me to introduce you to my choice for this important position that I spoke of minutes earlier. Agent Tabitha Blue is the most qualified person in this agency available for this assignment." He then looked down at the woman who was fighting off the effects of near shock on her face. "All this is contingent on you accepting this posting of course."

The younger woman had semi recovered from being totally blindsided by her bosses' offer. Angel thought, to the agent's credit, that she handled the unexpected attention—and potential promotion with as much professionalism as it deserved.

Angel couldn't say the same thing for herself however.

_What the fuck_...She thought dumfounded. She glared first at Sheridan and then at Agent Blue and finally at Christopher Prince in rapid succession. _How could Sheridan bypass you as a candidate for this posting, Christopher?_ He must have felt her fury and ducked her constant glaring by finding something worthwhile to look at on the hardwood floors.

"I can't say that I was expecting this type of honor being bestowed on me this morning, sir," Blue was showing her overbite again. "Yes, yes, I would be proud to accept this responsibility. I _want_ to do this."

Justice Price nodded at the younger woman a satisfied smile played a tune on her lips.

"Special Agent Blue, our committee has already been briefed on your service record early on in the process when the deputy director was mentioned as a probable candidate to serve in his new capacity. I stand here before you very pleased with Sheridan's choice for this posting."

Berry folded his arms, apparently not as easily pleased or silenced.

"Do not misunderstand me or my words, young lady. Your qualifications are extemporary as it has already been said here before but—"

"What is it, sir," Blue asked Berry. "What is it that troubles you about my role in this?"

"Agent Blue, you took a gunshot to the head only six months ago." He asked her quickly. "Are you completely healed from your injuries?"

"I have," Blue nodded as if she had anticipated this line of questioning. "Thank you for your concern, sir. But the truth is that I've never felt physically better than I do right now...at least since that night. The surgeon that treated me did a miraculous job." Blue stared in Angel's direction for a long minute. Seth was at the top of his game despite all that he'd been through himself in the hours before he pulled that bullet out of Blue's skull. "And the psychological therapy that I've been through in the months since has brought my focus and concentration to a higher plain. I won't bore any of you with all of those details of my recovery, sir. What I can tell you is this, Justice Berry: I won't fail you. I give you my word."

Justice Berry stared at Blue for a long time after she'd last spoken...and then he nodded in her general direction and disappeared out of the door without saying adding a word of his own. The other Justices silently followed him out.

After the door shut behind the last of them Angel said aloud:

"What in the hell just happened here?"

Tabitha Blue looked as if she could stand no longer. She settled herself in one of the nearby uncomfortable chairs as if standing for one minute longer would zap all of her remaining energy. Christopher now found something interesting to peer out of the window into the landscape of Washington, D.C.

"While I don't share the doctor's persistent distaste of your choice for job openings, Mr. Deputy Director," Blue let her words bite wherever and whoever they may. "I must admit to be truthfully surprised at your offer as well."

Sheridan grinned.

"You weren't a difficult sale for them or for me, Agent Blue." Sheridan sat on the desk where the young woman was seated. "You're work in this agency throughout your career is stellar. You are loyal, trustworthy and...vigilant. You're going to need all of those qualities, especially the latter, if you are to carry this assignment out successfully."

"Maybe," She leaned forward and looked up at Sheridan, but her expression had changed. "I heard you say that I was the best _available_ candidate." She turned around to where her ex-partner was still looking out of the window. He must have felt all of the eyes in the room glaring in his direction. "Why did you turn Sheridan down, Chris?"

Christopher spun around and could only manage a sheepish look on his dark, beautifully unblemished face. He didn't speak at first and then when he did open his mouth the words couldn't find their way clear of his lips.

"Well," Angel had run out of patience. "Are you going to say anything, Christopher?"

He tugged at the crease on his slacks and then seated himself on the table where Angel was sitting, which was adjacent to both Sheridan and Blue.

"Alright, okay," He threw his hands up at her. "The truth is that I lacked one critical area of qualification for accepting any advanced position within the bureau or any other governmental agency."

Angel sat up.

"And what would that qualification or lack thereof be?" she asked, but just as suddenly one of the likely answers popped into her head before her friend manufactured an answer.

"I am no longer employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigations." Christopher Prince announced.

Blue's chair whined as she pushed away from the table and made her way to her ex-partner's side in two heartbeats. Angel tried to control her breathing and relax but was finding that job a struggle. She did see Nicholas Sheridan though—and now it was his turn to glare at imaginary objects on the floor.

"What in the hell happened?" Blue asked him. "Internal affairs reviewed your actions during their inquiry. They reviewed all of our actions. You were cleared of any wrong doings, and concluded that your gun discharged at the moment the quake popped its top. They can't do this to you. They can't derail your career like that. Don't let them, Chris. We have the Deputy Director of the FBI on our side. We'll fight to get you reinstated...again."

Neither Sheridan nor Christopher made a sound or moved a muscle.

Blue pushed her hair out of her eye.

"Am I missing something here? I am missing something here aren't I?"

Sheridan said without looking up, "Tell them, Chris."

"I wasn't fired, Blue." Christopher stood up again and buttoned his jacket. "I resigned just before we arrived up here in D.C this morning."

" _What_." Angel and Blue said at the same time.

Sheridan's bushy eyebrows shot up. Angel surmised that his cell phone must have buzzed in his jacket's pocket or he was doing a fine acting job.

"Excuse me," He said and angled toward the door where the Justices had exited the room earlier. "I have to take this call."

After Sheridan closed the door behind him Blue slumped in her chair.

"I don't believe this, Chris. I _won't_ believe this. Why are you leaving the bureau?"

Christopher found his way back over to where Agent Blue was sitting. Angel sat back in her chair and used the back of it to support all of her weight against it.

"Blue, I want you to listen to me." He said. "Somewhere, sometime in those final few days and hours during all that hell that we all went through I realized—I recognized that my heart and soul wasn't in this anymore. I realized that I needed to find my place somewhere else far away from here with the time that has been given me."

Blue shook her head barely containing her fury.

"So you just pick up and leave, Chris? We've been through this before—this same conversation took place on that street corner before the Bishop and his Choir Boys showed. You've taught me everything that I know about law enforcement."

"If that is half true then you were an excellent student. And now you have graduated from all of those lessons with top honors. You've grown well past the need to be on anyone's leash, Tabitha, especially mine. You are ready to leave the nest. Sheridan's appointment proves that."

Blue's gaze hardened further.

"No," She said simply. "This isn't about me, Chris, it's about you. I refuse to believe that you are turning your back on this agency especially now at its greatest time of need. We need people, Chris, good people if we are going to bring this agency back from the brink. Sheridan wanted to appoint you to be his czar. I can see that truth in both your faces, but you turned his offer down to run away. It should be you leading the fight to take those who brought such pain and misery to your people, Chris—to people of color in Atlanta and across our country. And it should be you should be leading the fight to bring back those individuals who betrayed this agency and bolted for Pandora."

"Betrayal, you say," Chris looked away again to control his temper. "Have you forgotten that I put a gun in your face, Tabitha?"

Blue stepped around him until they were face to face once again.

"I forgave you for that. And if I remember correctly I had one pointed in yours as well. We were both under a lot of stress. We were fighting for the causes that we both strongly believed in. We were both right and we were both wrong. Anyway, the gunshot wound I suffered was a freak act of nature...an accident."

"I'm sorry, Tabitha, but I'm done here. My decision to leave the FBI is no _accident_."

"Chris, I didn't consider your actions that night as a betrayal to my trust."

"I'm sorry," Christopher could manage to utter nothing else.

"But _this_...if you walk away from me now, if you walk away from the bureau now..."

"I am sorry, Tabitha," Chris said and Angel recognized the strength of finality in her friend's voice. "But you are right about one thing: This isn't about you. I've walked away from the bureau because I've answered a higher calling. I'm needed elsewhere. I'm going to serve a greater cause than this bureau."

All of the air seemed to leak out of Tabitha Blue's lungs and her argument died a whispering death. She raised her shoulders as high as her frame would allow her. She took a deep breath and then walked towards the same door that Sheridan and the others had taken turns walking out of minutes ago. She opened it at last and looked back at the two of them that she would be leaving behind over her shoulder.

"The gun episode is the past and the past to me is prologue." Blue said evenly. "But what you do today is present and it is no less than a betrayal of the worst kind, Chris. And I won't ever forget it."

If Special Agent Tabitha Blue's words troubled Christopher in the minutes afterwards he didn't show it in either expression or words to Angel. He turned the chair that he'd been sitting in earlier around and sat in it backwards.

And then he pulled a single penny from his left pocket and began to toss it in the air again...and again...and again...

Angel took her turn at sitting her ass on the table next to where he sat and crossed her legs as they dangled over the edge.

"So when were you going to let me in on this little secret about your next career move."

"Don't start with me," Christopher said in a serious tone, but a tight smile hinted at a lighter reaction to her words, the whiteness of his straight teeth against the darkness of his skin was a marvel to behold. "And if you truly know me as well as you claim you do, Doctor, then you would already have known that I couldn't go back to them—not after they accepted Lucy Burgess' account of my past troubles with my stepdaughter without my consideration or intake. Where was their loyalty to me, Angel? I can't do this anymore. I can't afford to be naïve to what is going on in the real world any longer. This blanket of presumed innocence I've been lying under needs to be removed."

"Alright," She said moving past point's bygone and wanting to get into her friend's immediate present and possible future. "I'll play your little game, mister. I'll take a guess that you made your mind up about this decision some time ago. Making life changing pronouncements on a whim is not your M O. You may have even decided this during all of that hellfire we were going through in April. You didn't want to resign until you were absolutely sure that you had your next job lined up."

"I told Blue that it was a 'higher calling',"

"Whatever,"

They both laughed. Laughing felt good. She couldn't recall the last time she had a good laugh. _But I can remember the last time that I had a drink. I can remember the day that all the laughter in my life died a harrowing death because I can't celebrate it with a toast._ As for Christopher, and the matters at hand, Angel could feel the tension easing between them—even if that wasn't likely to last moving forward.

The therapy that she was enrolled in to aid her kick her bad habits wasn't easy on her mentally or physically to say the least. She understood now more than ever before why people hated shrinks. They forced you to confront the worst aspects of your own personality. And the worse aspect of her personality is that couldn't go through a single day without wanting a drink, _needing_ one. Yet, without her husband Seth's support she wouldn't have made it this far.

But is this the day—this day and no further; is this the day that I fold?

And yet, she still had matters to settle with Chris moving forward about her role in Pandora—her dealings with Louis/Hugh Keaton that may sever their lifelong friendship after he found out those truths that were yet to come _. Get it over with, Doc, tell him now_. Was that her voice shining through in herself conscious or Roxanne Sanchez's? Even with the countless interviews by Internal Affairs or her testimonies still to come in front of a Grand Jury about the disaster of Atlanta would expose the truths of who was probably behind his stepdaughter's death—and why.

Today should be that day after all.

But she knows that it won't be.

"If you want to talk about your new job, Christopher," She said instead. "If you ready to reveal some details about your starting date or salary—"

Instead of talking Christopher hopped up from his chair, checked his watch, tossed the penny up one last time, caught it and put it away all in one motion while whistling softly.

"Wow, time really flies when you are having fun, Doc," He kissed her on her cheek. "But you should keep your eyes and ears open. You never know where I'll land on my feet."

"Come here,"

Angel straightened out his tie for him. He looked good...the lone exception was the dullness and lack of focus in his eyes that she'd never seen before. She told herself that it was only the obvious stress they'd all been under, or fatigue, or something or the other to do with his new job—

But then she smelled alcohol coming out of his pores of his face.

_I'm imagining this_ , she thought; _I know that I'm imagining this. Don't go where I've gone, Christopher. Don't become who I've become._

"Thank you, Doctor," Christopher said when she finished at last. He checked his watch one last time. "I've got to go now. I'm running late for my flight back to Atlanta." He flipped the penny in the air once again. If there was an explanation in this repeated action it had escaped her so far. "I have business—and then I have _business_. I'll call you after I land."

Five minutes after he had left her in the conference room alone—she worked out a matrix of possibilities in her mind and the probable truth of Christopher Prince's new occupation caused her to cock a brow and hit her like a punch in her gut.

" _Son of a bitch, Christopher_ ," She said aloud. "Tell me you didn't do what I think you have."
Chris

Georgia State Capital (Courtyard); October 2011

It was raining.

Can you believe that, after months and months of drought, that it would rain today here in Atlanta, today of all days.

Christopher Prince rubbed at his jaw and wondered how many more lives could have been spared from Serena's Whirlwind if this city had any sufficient amounts of precipitation in the weeks before that deranged woman unleashed her inferno upon them all.

_What is past is prologue_ , his former partner's voice of several hours ago echoed from the depths of his subconscious.

Christopher Prince looked out past Atlanta's latest tempest—and he could bite back his stubbornness and his smile playing on his lips no longer. An estimated crowd of 100,000 people of color were squeezed together here in the courtyard outside Georgia's State Capitol to hear him speak on the future.

He took one final breath before walking from underneath the shed out into the rain himself to podium that awaited him the way a groom awaits his bride. A local minister was leading all of those who had come—and the several millions that watched the broadcast from the method of their choice—in a prayer.

The people came this evening holding up pictures of loved ones lost during the various flashpoints of Atlanta's hideous events. Many came wielding banners showing the names of the fallen, some conveying biblical passages, and a few...just a few wielded signs that ushered his father's words from long ago that still resonated today:

_Brothers and sisters, what do you see when you visualize our people's future?_ And the next line always issued the same response. _We see days filled with misery and pain._

And by all that was holy, Isaac Prince's one surviving son could see all of that misery in the eyes of those that 411 had left behind. He could see the pain as they stood here together shoulder to shoulder out in this downpour.

And yet if one looked hard enough...you could see something else entirely.

Serena Tennyson's Whirlwind had not taken the fight out of these people...it had not snuffed out the flame of their resolve completely.

A House in Chains wasn't quite dead yet.

It was time for him to speak.

It was time for Christopher Prince to clock in with his new employer.

It was time for the One to continue the legacy that his father founded and that his brother had steered from a high level of honor and respect to an even elevated level of existence.

He took the short/long walk to the platform into the posting that had always by rights by his and his alone.

"Thank you for coming. It is good to see you all here in this most historic of grounds. This is a place where your ancestors and mine once walked to and then stood here in protest of our denial of the most basic of human and civil rights. Now, I know that most of you standing here in this rain this evening weren't even born yet, but the facts in hand make the truth of what happened then no less relevant.

"I will apologize to all of you in advance before I go any further. I regret that I have failed to write a speech that will stir up emotions or perhaps that will leave its mark on history when people listen to it decades from now. My brother, a man that you all knew as Xavier Prince, once told me that I had a gift for words that he would never had. I loved my brother more than any of you will ever know. And yet, he was wrong in that assessment of his older sibling. Today I will leave speech and prophecy and innuendo to brighter and better men than the one who stands before you. The truth is all that I brought with me today."

A woman shouted yes from his far left while he heard pockets of faint to polite applause every time he would pause for breath. And the rain had seemed to subdue with each passing minute making it easier for everyone to play closer attention to his words and not the elements.

"This is the saddest of all occasions we share here this evening. I don't think that I need to tell you that. I look around this state capital and I see the pictures of our loved ones that we have lost forever. I see your pain. I _feel_ your pain. We wear it together. The minister who prayed with you before I stepped over here is a wonderful pastor and an even better man. I know him personally. And as any good Christian would—he would remind all of us that if you except Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior that you will be with your loved ones again...you will see them again—"

Chris heard a dozen _hallelujahs_ and the polite applause had increased in volume and intensity.

"I can only pray that I may become a better man—a better Christian so that I will see my brother Xavier again. I hope that I may lay my eyes on my father Isaac Prince and the woman who birth me as well. I hope to see all of those who have gone on to eternity and left me behind to carry on.

"And yet, I know that this is highly unlikely because ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls I know that I am _not_ a good Christian man."

Laughter prevailed even after a thunderous applause died down.

"I am prideful. I am sinful. I am resentful. But I do have _one_ redeeming value: I stand before you this evening carrying the _truth_ with me. And that truth shall set me _free_."

Christopher Prince heard a new roar of approval from those who had braved the storm— _all_ of the storms that had befallen them to see him speak live this evening. He could see the bright lights of the television cameras in his face. And the rain had slowed even further, enough that when he wasn't speaking, the grounds around the capital were virtually silent.

"A pessimist would say that a House in Chains had accomplished everything that it set out to do. He would tell us that there is nothing left for us to achieve. 411 knocked us down. The last minutes of Scar _kept_ us down. He would tell us that it would be highly unwise for our House to ever exhibit such power and influence over the lives of so many ever again. I can tell you that I am an optimist. I can tell you that I don't believe in such pessimism because it originates in lies. I can tell you not to believe in these lies either. Change comes slowly—but I don't have to tell any of you this do I? Change comes slowly in the hearts and minds of men. It comes at a snail's pace to nations and civilizations. My pastor would tell you that the fundamental inability to change is the very reason we fail as human beings in the sight of our God."

The roar of the 100,000 or so in attendance that had come to hear him was deafening. Chris backed away from the podium to let his people have their vocal victory before he tried to speak again.

"Never forget that those who perpetrated 411 did so not because of hate, but because of _fear_. If you hear nothing else that I say tonight please remember this: It is their _fear_ that fans the flames of hate and discord in their hearts. It is their _fear_ that brought destruction to the Andrew Young Youth Center. It was their _fear_ that brought a massacre to the Fox Theatre. It was _fear_ that caused them to take away President Adolphus Sweet and Mayor Ernestine Johnson. And it was _fear_ that allowed them to unleash a monster on our streets by the name of Keaton to terrorize our children...

"And make no mistake—they _still_ fear us. And as long as that fear remains we must be prepared to do what we must to protect ourselves from their aggression. There are a few of you here today who have lived long enough to have followed my father. We honor you. We honor the patience and the resilience that you've shown. A great many more of you served my brother Xavier. I honor you. I honor your loyalty. Both of those great men of color died for what they believed in. They both shared the single minded purpose of making life better for every one of you who have come here today. I want you to know that their single minded purpose is _my_ purpose as well. I have answered a higher calling. I am here for you. I am at last here in this place where I belong."

The rain had stopped but Chris could feel the sweat pouring down his collar towards his chiseled chest as the crowd cheered and began to chant his name over the next several minutes.

He finally was forced to silence the the masses by raising his hands high into the darkness of the Atlanta night.

"Our House has accomplished a many great deeds under my family's leadership. In particular I feel that the liberation of the Carver Housing Projects from the thugs and drug dealers was the right thing to do. We saved our missing children by using any and all means necessary was the right thing to do. Striking back at any uncompromising, unrelenting and unholy enemy like Pandora who would oppose us was and continues to be the right thing to do. Let no man tell you any different. Do not allow the media to tell you anything different. Do not elect officials that would tell you anything different."

The crowd's decibel level raised two fold and it took Chris a full five minutes to quite those who he himself had stirred to a fever pitch.

"Past is Prologue. The present watches us from the shadows. The future—the Vision of our Future is far from secure...still, I challenge each and every one to remember your feelings of pain, feelings of loss and feelings of suffering that you have gone through up until today. I am here for you if you will have me. I will continue to fight with my last ounce of strength for our people's rights. I stand before you ready to complete what others in my beloved family have started. I am a _Prince_. I know that there are hundreds of Carver's nationwide that need liberating. There are thousands of children of color that need our protection. Make no mistake though—friends and neighbors, boys and girls—those who believe in and would support the twisted ideologies of a Serena Tennyson and Pandora are out there ready to pick up the pieces of the broken pathetic banner of hate and violence. There is more madness to come. Just know that I have your back. A new Board and Circle who will govern wiser than before will have your back. A new detail of Peacekeepers who will be stronger than before will have your back. A House in Chains will rise from the ashes of what came before will have your back.

He held both of his arms up and spoke quickly one final time into another loud ovation.

"I was once asked a question: I was asked what I see when I visualize our people's future—and someone answered for me that he saw days filled with misery and pain.

"That was a lifetime ago.

"The next time that your brother or your sister ask you the same—the very next time someone ask you what do you see when you visualize our people's future."

Christopher Prince...the One...the most dangerous man in the entire world paused only briefly.

"Tell them that I see days and nights full of _joy_ and a thousand year reign."

All who had gathered before him cheered his name and wept until their tears had long dried and sang songs of remembrance and danced as one giant body.

And then the leader of a House in Chains began to hop in a singular space—he _stomped_ in open defiance against any and all who would seek absolution or forgiveness if they dared oppose his House.

100,000 People of Color stomped with him.
Thomas

Aerospace Hospice Care; Buckhead, Thanksgiving 2011

The Good Book stated over and over that the wages of sin resulted in death.

Juice spilled as Thomas Pepper carved meat away from breast bone of his turkey, tossed it on his plate next to his canned peas and instant mashed potatoes and pressed the PLAY button on his DVR again. He was watching the replay of Chris Prince's speech from a month ago at the Georgia State Capital for the third time today.

This time however, he forwarded to the final five minutes that he had book marked. And then he took a page full of notes while he watched this portion of the video over and over again to his satisfaction while he ate. He took particular notice to Chris' facial actions and tried to match his words to those subtle, but important things that had gone _unsaid_ that rain soaked evening in Atlanta. _When did you make this critical decision in your heart, Chris?_

Thomas jotted down in his notes that he believed that the decision might have been made when Chris found his brother nearly dead in that compound. Guilt could be a powerful instrument for change. _The wages of sin often result in death_ , he thought again.

And yet, was Thomas Pepper thinking of the man on his television screen or himself—

A terrible pain struck him in the midsection that forced his pen from his hand.

Stubborn as ever and determined Thomas sat himself back up. He sat the food aside and penciled in a few last notes. Chris' speech would prove invaluable for him in finishing the last chapters of his book. He rubbed at his bearded face which was quite the contrast of when he ran his fingers over the hundreds of sheets of paper of his manuscript. What he had written—what he'd personally experienced in far too many of these pages astounded him.

Thomas peeked at one of the many chapters that he had dedicated to Serena Tennyson. He rubbed his beard again. He wondered if the critics...and the public in general would look unfavorably at the shadow of sympathy that he cast on her—especially as her personal story drew to a close. Sympathy was not what he wanted. It damned sure wasn't that would have been the voice she would have asked him to speak in for her. And yet, he was the speaker for the dead. The chapters on Louis Keaton and Xavier Prince...and Lucy Burgess and all the other participants articulated through his narration, his voice.

And then there was the problem of the living.

To this day, Thomas Pepper still wondered who this other wing—this other person was that Serena swore was her other half was. Thomas would have sworn on a thousand Bibles that it would have to be Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree of course. That made the most sense. And yet, Thomas realized that very little of what came six months or so before made any sense, especially from the eyes of those who were not directly involved.

Serena Tennyson was a changed woman, especially after she and Danielle Rohm returned from their short trip to Memphis. And it was far more to this transition than Louis Keaton's blood and flesh under her fingernails.

He ran his thick fingers across the finished pages of his manuscript once again. This was a book that his editor and publisher were impatiently waiting for. They had actually requested that he finish it a month or so ago so their people could handle the final edits, set the typeset and have the hardcover design put in place by tomorrow's date. Thomas Pepper couldn't be angry with them for wanting to capitalize on Black Friday and the beginning of the holiday rush in the retail market.

And his publicist reminded him that although he had unequaled access to some of the game's most high profile players he was facing stiff competition from others in both public and private life this go round. There were rumors of books coming from federal agents, CNN personalities and even a handful of Pandora sympathizers who had been ousted since a Whirlwind devastated Atlanta.

_A Whirlwind_ , he thought while he sat back in his easy chair, not _the_ Whirlwind. Thomas was unsure of what exactly that devastation might have been but it looked as if the country had avoided it thus far.

And he had continue to joke with his publishing brethren that it wasn't as if he wouldn't live long enough to finish writing this—

And then a pain with some depth and volume spilled his large frame over onto the floor.

20 minutes later Thomas Pepper wiped the tears away from his eyes and lifted himself up off of the floor.

They would have to wait a while longer for his manuscript and that was damned fine by him.

Although his store cooked bird had cooled he still savored the taste as he finished his meal. Even an unholy man needed to celebrate Thanksgiving in his own way. It was early afternoon for sure, but he would brave the chill in the air and the pain in his abdomen and keep at least one promise today.

He scanned his notes again. Watching the DVR reminded him to check on a couple more specific passages on Chris Prince. Thomas was convinced more than ever that the murder of the former FBI Agent's step daughter was more than a footnote to all of this. He was also convinced that Keaton had little if anything to do with the young woman's brutal killing as well. _I do think_ _that you know something, Doctor_. Angel had refused to return his calls in the last month, especially with her official testimony to a Federal Grand Jury fast approaching. _You are hiding_ _something, Doctor, and that something falling into the hands of the Feds is the least of your concerns._ She was fighting for her career and even perhaps fighting for her freedom as well—but Thomas would bet his life that wasn't what had silenced her so far.

He finally worked himself over to his desk. He worked the combination of his safe until it popped open and stuck his work inside and slammed the door shut behind it. He'd interviewed more than a hundred people for their individual accounts of the events that had shaken a nation at its core.

But he wasn't suddenly trembling because of that acknowledgment.

Walking down his own personal memory lane of what happened to him, what _could_ have happened to him and what happened _because_ of him had been an exercise he didn't want to repeat today.

He checked his watch and decided that it was time to change his clothes for his guest that would be soon arriving. He took four of his prescriptions after he had showered and used the bathroom. In his bedroom he picked out one of the two pair of jeans that he owned and grabbed the lone pair of old sneakers from off the shelf. He grabbed a jacket big enough to warm him but light enough to allow his arms and hands some freedom of movement.

Thomas had a job to do.

And then a new round of pains floored him.

He was forced to try to raise himself again from off all fours. _I'm not going to be able to_ _this time get up_. He knew that there was a service button located near the bed's headboard. If he could reach it...and that was a big if...he could ring one of the desk nurses who could start earning that time and half by helping him get back to his feet. And yet, Thomas did not crawl towards the button that would bring him aid.

Thomas Pepper prayed instead.

He knew that both of his doctors disapproved of his plans to truck out of this facility today—especially considering the chill in the air and the deficiencies in his immune system. He didn't want to hand anymore ammunition to either one of those women that would endanger his chance to keep his promise.

He heard a knock on his room door.

He bit his bottom with determination as he struggled to stand again. He was feeling weaker and more disoriented than before. And his Thanksgiving dinner wasn't sitting on his stomach right either.

And yet, Thomas Pepper smile was genuine enough to fool the three older women of color he saw when he opened his door. They said their hellos and seemed to notice nothing out of the ordinary immediate than anything that he'd chosen to show them before. Nothing was going to keep the four of them from their appointed rounds today.

Wearing two latex gloves on each hand, Thomas served his first bowl of soup to an older white woman three hours later. The line for the free meal was wrapped around the grounds that had been roped off that the new church would be built on in the spring. Most of downtown Atlanta was in ruins even six months after being declared a federal disaster area. Thomas knew that this large southern city wasn't alone as many other high profile cities with highly urban populations had suffered similar fates.

Yet, Thomas Pepper knew the smell in those cities couldn't be what it was here.

The rain totals had returned to normal levels. Thomas thought that perhaps it was God's tears cleansing metro Atlanta from the hellfire it experienced. He knew for sure that it would be another 100 years before another earthquake with that scope and power tore through the southeast.

Yet, the charred remains of structures and landscapes throughout the city had proven to be its most jarring and unnerving reminder of what happened here. He fought back tears as he greeted each person who had come in search of meal and the fellowship that came as a side item. Both server and those who were being served were grateful for the experience.

The benches they used as tables were gifts from strangers in the city who had a kind a heart and the dime to spend.

The gift of a new church being built for Pastor Joe Washington and those who accepted him in its bosom at his greatest hour of need was from his.

The minister greeted him after he had finished his duties. The two men—one big and the other _huge_ —hugged each other with all the force that their admiration for the other would allow. Pastor Washington whispered in Thomas' ear that God loved him and that he loved him as well. Thomas said his thanks and slyly whispered back that they would find out soon enough about whether his first statement was true. Washington thanked him again for coming—and thanked him for the thousandth time for financing his church's rebuild. Thomas shook the sentiments off for a thousandth time. He only harkened back to how afraid he was that night...how very afraid that neither he nor the country he loved would survive the tribulations until he saw the morning light.

He stood arm and arm with Pastor Washington. The smiles on both their faces were worth the new round of discomfort that was thumping him from the inside out. He looked out the area that the church would rise from the ashes and felt a burst of energy and a new resolve to live long enough to see its completion.

Perhaps he would live just long enough to walk the aisles towards the altar himself. Perhaps he would do just that. Perhaps his God could find room through his salvation for an unholy man like Thomas Pepper after all.

He found that despite the cold Atlanta air that he had worked up a good sweat as he had volunteered to sweep around the benches while the others washed the giant pots and pans. He could feel them watching him. Pastor Washington and the others knew his condition and prognosis. They wanted him to be smart and not overextend himself...

Thomas found that he had to stop for the second time in as many minutes as he was struggling to catch his breath. He coughed...and then he coughed again into his hands. And when he coughed a third time he found blood dripping from his fingers to the ground below.

And then his stomach felt as the walls lining his stomach exploded and all the feeling in his lower extremities failed him all at once.

And Thomas Pepper lay helpless and dying in the exact spot where Pastor Joe Washington promised the church's new altar would stand.
Chapter Twenty Eight

I know that you don't want to talk about this sort of thing, Christopher, so just listen okay. None of us is going to live forever, I know that. But if anything ever happens to me I want you to promise me that you will allow yourself to fall in love again. I want to hear you _say_ it to me right now.

-Hoshi Givens in May of 1988
Angel

Timber Pines Cabins; Blairsville, Georgia, November 2011

After the Dupree's had made love Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree watched the expression on her husband's face change.

He had exhausted himself on her and had nothing left so she quickly and skillfully spun their bodies over until Seth was now lying on his back and she was off to his side. She ran her long manicured fingernails through the thick hairs on his chest. His breathing was finally slowing to normal levels. They smiled at each other. He sat up enough to peck at her thick lips with his thin ones. She ran her fingers through his hair then.

Seth told her over and over again that he loved her until his words sounded like lyrics to a lullaby. Angel made jokes about his throaty rendition and then she tickled him in a very tender spot. Finally, she squeezed that very special part of him—until they were at it again.

When both reached their climax again it was Angel's chest that rose and fell with considerable effort. Ten minutes later she found herself lying back on her pillow when she heard Seth snoring ever lightly next to her.

_You are a smart man, my husband_. Yet, Angel had continued to fool him over the past six months the same way that she'd fooled him during their entire marriage. She certainly respected him as a man. She felt safe when she was in his arms. She watched him sleep for a minute. A part of her had always adored him. But she had to accept the facts as they were. She owed both of them at least that much.

In her heart Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree had never felt love, not in a romantic way, for her husband Dr. Seth Dupree.

And in all of the hell that the man had gone through during the worst of Scar trying to reach her—in an attempt to save her from Roxanne Sanchez's ire...hadn't changed that fact.

The truth was that Angel still didn't love him in that way. _I think the reason I keep you around is to relieve myself of the loneliness that I would feel otherwise. I have my work and I have you, Seth, and nothing else._

And this holiday weekend excursion of sex and slumber in these vacation cabins here in Blairsville, Georgia hadn't changed that fact one damned bit.

And that made her a little sad—

Angel then ever subtly she felt a little _paranoid_...as if she could feel someone watching them.

It was _him._

It was him at long last.

And she wasn't going to lose him again.

"Just relax in here until I call return for you," She touched Seth's face with just enough force to wake him without startling her husband. She slid on her panties and wrapped a silk housecoat around her waist. She left it open at the top so that the constant threat of her breast spilling out would distract even the most focused perpetrator's invasion that she was expecting any moment. "I'm going to fix us some breakfast,"

Angel knew that the FBI was watching of course. And knowing that they were constantly close by provided her an elevated sense of eroticism that she valued so much. Seth wasn't nearly as comfortable with it. Still, as evidenced by their last session together, he was becoming more accustomed to their intervention in their lives.

Something felt different here tonight.

The mole had finally found her.

Joseph Champion was here in this mountain retreat.

She _knew_ it.

"Breakfast," Seth glanced up just long enough to look at the alarm clock on his side of the nightstand. "Angel, its 12:15 in the morning, who eats breakfast this time of night?"

She planted on hand on her hip and cocked a brow in mocked effort to show defeat while not betraying her intuitions to him just yet.

"Alright, Seth...well allow me to whip you a midnight snack of eggs and bacon that you will never forget."

Seth scrubbed at the gray in his hair and shrugged.

"Sure," And when she turned around to walk towards the kitchen he added: "Angel, make absolutely certain that you turn on all the tracking devices that the FBI provided us. Now is not the time to start taking chances, especially with us being so isolated out here in these woods."

"Alright,"

"Angel,"

"Yea,"

"I love you."

And it hurt like hell to hear him say it then after the finalization of her feelings for him manifested itself so openly a few minutes ago. So she blew him a kiss instead. Seth deserved the truth. Likely he would have to settle for getting in line on that front. A part of her—the decent woman deep inside of her—told her that she would grant him the divorce that he so richly deserved after Champion was caught. But the real Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree, the woman who stood half naked in this doorway, would likely continue with this charade of lies that kept her husband close enough...

...close enough that she wouldn't be alone.

So she only flashed Seth one of her a wicked smiles, her left breast, the .22 strapped to her thigh and hit the alarm button on wall.

Angel never could cook worth a damn.

She whipped up some eggs, but any the bacon seemed to be in short supply. She settled for some frozen pizza she found in the freezer and stuck it in the microwave that this cabin provided. She looked out of the kitchen window at a grand view of mountainside while she waited on the pizza to warm.

There was enough landscape between each cabin here to give each renter a true sense of camping out, but still providing enough restaurants and other conveniences of home to give the appearance of civilization nearby. Angel truly liked this place and the certain level of isolation, to use her husband's word for it, which its location provided. If she were truly trying to save her marriage and make it work this was exactly the prescription and therapy she would have recommended to her and her husband long ago. _The world is so quiet_ —

Angel heard a single heavy thump rise out of the silence of the bedroom where Seth likely was sleeping.

She started for the bedroom, but halted her progress almost after her first step. The microwave beeped in its completion, but her eggs were burning so she shut the stove off.

And when she turned back around Joseph Champion was holding a Colt .45 in her face.

"Hello, Angel," Champion shushed her and waved his own gun at her so that she would back away from him slowly.

"It's been a long time, Joseph," She tied her housecoat in a loose knot better to conceal her .22 from him. "How have you been getting along?"

Champion closed the bedroom door behind him where Seth could be dead or worse and leaned his narrow ass on the nearby counter. "I have been a little busy, you know me, Angel... I've always got something going on." He did a little waving motion with his index finger. "Before we start with why I came all this way to see you I need you unfasten your robe, Angel,"

Angel rolled her tongue across her full top lip.

"You haven't changed a bit have you, naughty boy."

"It isn't like that at all, Angel." Champion was sweating like a pig. Angel knew that the FBI Agents would have been scrambling to activate the bypasses to the complex decoding systems to the alarms on the cabin and the area nearby. The rules stated that her friends with the wire taps were not to immediately fear the worse, but they were to work fast while they ascertained why she was suddenly out of contact from them.

She had to work fast as well—without betraying the fact that she was working on the timer ticking in her brain.

She sighed.

She took off her robe and tossed it away from where he was standing. She saw his face lighten up and his eyes widen when he saw her .22. The question of how she fit even that small a caliber of a gun into the string of her drawers was etched across his face. He gripped his handle tighter.

"I'll need to take that from you, Angel."

"Sure,"

She limped over to where he was and let him snatch it from her panties. _No tricks_ , she told herself. _At least no deceptions of the traditional types._ Champion's roughness had popped the string—and now she stood completely nude in front of this man. _And this weapon you've uncovered may provide me more protection than any gun may have._

Champion wasn't an idiot however. He saw through her plan. He walked over to and scooped her robe off of the floor and tossed it back at her and instructed Angel to put it back on. Angel could feel the silk hugging her shoulders as she did his bidding. She tied a new knot that was only faintly tighter than the one before it.

"Is my husband alive in that bedroom?"

"Maybe," Seth nodded his head twice and showed her a mean looking blood drenched blade that was in his possession before he laid it on the counter behind him. "The fact of whether or not he remains in any salvageable condition is entirely up to you. I've made three surgical cuts in strategic areas that I'm sure a man of his professional experience would appreciate. The short of it is this, Angel: Your husband will die if this conversation between us goes on too long."

Once again, Angel was reminded that Joseph Champion was no fool. _But he may be insane_. Either he knew that this room was wired and the FBI was nearby and planned for all three of them to die all along—or he'd truly felt that they were isolated enough to seek her out and reveal what he knew.

"So if looks as if you have the floor, Joseph," She said. "What would you like to talk about?"

"I know that the FBI has been monitoring you and your husband's movements. I would have never been able to get this close to the both of you if you hadn't taken this weekend sabbatical up here." He did a semi-circle in a small space. "I'm surprised at you, Doc. You should have known that I wouldn't give up on finding you. I couldn't give up on you, not this soon. It's only been six months."

"You're right, Joseph," Angel relaxed her stance and put her forearms on the counter behind her. "I should have known better as well. I should have especially known not to trust you."

Champion waved his gun at her.

"Save all of those guilt trips for someone who gives a damn. You are far from innocent yourself, Angel. Word on the street is that you are facing a Federal Grand Jury and potential jail time for your involvement with Pandora and with that butt fucker known as Hugh Keaton. You trained him...you trained that monster how to conduct himself while he kidnapped those children."

"I can't deny that I spent months with him." She responded quickly. The FBI should have been done with her checks by now and first point of the operation should be online by now. "And you are also right that I know, at least at a conscious level, that Serena Tennyson would one day unleash this monster as a weapon against People of Color. I can tell you that Keaton's growth into his role went far beyond either of our expectations. He was running like a well-oiled psychotic machine by the time he had taken his first child. He couldn't have been far more deadly. He couldn't have been far more lethal in every aspect." She dared step towards her captive. "But he was not _any_ of those things, Joseph, not really. He died as he had lived: A troubled soul with too many time bombs ticking in his brain. He liked to fuck young boys. He wasn't organized or conniving enough to do anything else beyond what his brain was programmed to do. And that is why I know that he didn't kill Erica Lovings, Joseph." Angel's voice softened and spoke volumes at the same time. "I know that you did kill her."

"What are you talking about?" Champion laughed like a madman. "You're crazier than shit, Angel."

"You could certainly argue that, Joseph. But that point doesn't change the fact of what you've done."

"Why would I kill her, Angel?" Champion's bushy brows rose to the top of his forehead. "I had no particular beef with Chris Prince or his estranged ex-wife."

Angel nodded.

"And that's why I couldn't put it all together—at least at first." She admitted to him. "I know the story of your wife's fate. I know how she was beaten and murdered by those drug dealers in Texas. And I know that Serena helped sooth your pain somewhat when you were able to match an eye for an eye when you killed Erica in what served as your idea for retaliation for wrongs done to you."

"This isn't about Chris Prince,"

"I know that now as well," Angel said and meant. And then she raised her voice. "You believe in paying your debts in full, sometimes two fold, Joseph. Pandora gave you the opportunity you'd sought since your wife's murder to set things right, at least in your own mind. Erica Loving's murder was your gift to Serena in aiding in an attempt to throw Christopher off his mental game that both of you found necessary if you were going to beat him."

"And I paid her graciousness with weakness and treachery and betrayal."

Angel shook her head.

"Save it, Joseph. You've played this game—you've played this game like a _champion,_ but it's over now. I know the truth about you, Joseph."

"What—"

"It has all been a game to you since we slept together in Macon. You've been setting yourself up as a mole, this martyr to the cause of Pandora. Sure, you were running alright. Serena wanted you dead for being disloyal, but even she didn't know the extent of what you had truly done outside of her sphere of influence."

"I don't know what you are talking about." Champion said, but his foundation of composure was showing its first sign of cracking. "Yes, I killed Erica Lovings for the reasons that you stated. And all of the personal beefs she had with the Bishop and his people in Carver provided an easy cover for me and my motives when Roxanne Sanchez came looking for her."

"But Erica wasn't the only one that you killed was she, Joseph."

Champions face frowned in confusion at first—and then hardened with a new resolve.

"I didn't shoot President Adolphus Sweet,"

"I believe you, Joseph," Angel said. "But you were and still are a member of the renegade band of Pandora working outside out of Oracle's knowledge or consent that forced her to have him shot to cover the poising that _you_ are responsible for. You killed the President of the United States with this poison of yours. You killed the Mayor of Atlanta as well—"

" _By God, I should have killed them all_."

"What?"

"Tell me that you aren't so naïve, Angel. Damn, girl, I've got to give you full props. You are a world class doctor, yet I still think you chose the wrong field to make your living. You're a born investigator, Angel. You've figured this whole thing out from its origins. So I don't want you to go all stupid on me now."

_Seth, sweet Seth, you may be dying just a few feet away from me, but we need to learn the entire truth about this right now_. "What in the hell are you talking about, Joseph?"

"The president and the mayor were mere test subjects of a far greater experiment in scope. An associate of mine, a former high level operative of the Atlanta Office for Disease Office, created a toxin that specifically kills People of Color while leaving the rest of us alone?"

"What," She sounded doubtful, but the world had witnessed two examples of its lethalness thus far. "How does something like that work?"

"I'm so glad you asked, Angel. You don't know how long I wanted to share this with someone outside our little group of patriots. Soon after 911 Pandora suspended its initial plans of an assault on A House in Chains indefinitely. We—the renegades as you called my people—marched on and dumped ton after ton of our toxin into the water and food supplies across North America. There it sat dormant until our people felt necessary to call it into action."

"Cut do the chase, Joseph, you aren't a scientist. Where does your personal piece fit into this jigsaw puzzle?"

"I had people in the Houston Field Office of the FBI who share my hatred for _them_. They are a talented group of scientist. They designed the delivery system necessary to make our weapon operational at a moment's notice."

Angel considered the possibilities.

"You used an airborne triggering mechanism." She said after some time and thought. "You had gained access to the heating ducts inside Ernestine Johnson's home and the hotel where President Sweet was supposedly shot."

Champion's brows rose to the cabin's ceiling, impressed that she'd put it all together so quickly—and apparently correctly as well. Yet, Angel felt her own eyebrows rising with her next thought:

"If what you said is true that we all have been affected by your poisoning of the food and water supplies. Why haven't more people—"

"The toxin is engineered to aggressively attack the higher percentage of melon compositions that exist within a certain population group in North America. In English, Doctor, the darker a person's skin tone the more likely they are to fall victim to our toxin's bite."

"You're insane, Joseph," Angel said to man who she thought she once knew. "And what you were doing was contemplating the eradication of an entire race of human beings from this planet. The sane of us would name that genocide, Joseph."

"You are wrong on both accounts." He replied in a quiet voice. "The insane don't _feel_ , Angel. Even after all that I've done I still have enough of the rage brewing inside of me to know that I am far from crazy. And what you call genocide, Angel, I would call a liberation from an inferior race of savages...the _Whirlwind_ as I've adopted from Serena. I am saving us from _them_. They are unworthy. They are inferior. "

"Did Raymond Rice know?"

Champion nodded once.

"He suspected. That was the reason that he wanted me off the streets at all cost. He planted the notion that I was a mole so that agents of both the FBI and Pandora wouldn't go digging for anything else that could be motivating my real intentions. Rice was only concerned with neutralizing Xavier Prince and a House in Chains. He was a fool. The witch, better known to all of us as Serena Tennyson, was wrapped up in her own distorted world of dirt piles, hallucinations and dragons. Don't get me wrong, she was a powerful force in her own right, but Oracle would be standing by myside right now if she had blessed with a broader vision and scope—if she had seen the bigger picture for what it is and not what she wanted to believe it was. Eventually, I had disappeared off of the grid. Rice got desperate. He even tried to talk Serena into standing down as a last act of desperation to protect the truth from getting out to the masses, but Danielle Rohm killed him protecting her Oracle."

"So your wife's murder to the lowest dominator of a man— _one_ black man is worth eradicating millions of People of Color. And you call Serena's beliefs of her Dragon distorted?"

Angel dared to walk close enough to hear Joseph Champion's breathing.

"There is something I don't get about all of this, Joseph. You've had this weapon of mass destruction at your disposal for months now. If you've have the means of ending your pain and destroying countless lives at your whim why haven't you done so already?"

He pushed Angel back a foot with the barrel of his bun. Yet, she saw a new point of fury in his eyes that replaced the one that had dwelled there only minutes before.

"Raymond Rice and Serena Tennyson aren't the only ones in this world who are shortsighted." And when Angel failed to comment on that he continued. "The scientist who developed the contaminant got cold feet and dipped on us shortly after the Peacekeepers began their murderous crusade against former and underground agents of Pandora during Scar."

"Or perhaps he had a change of heart, Joseph," She said, her voice nearly a whisper. _He's purposely not giving up this man's name. He knows or at least suspects the FBI is listening._ "Or perhaps he couldn't wrap his mind around being a major player in the unconditional eradication of a people from this planet."

"It makes no matter. People loyal to me—loyal to my belief of peace in our time have been searching for him since the night of his disappearance. We call ourselves Pandora Red. We're close—"

"Any diabolical mind that could conjure up something as destructive as a weapon that attacks it's victim's melon composition won't be found, Joseph. If you disappeared off the grid then a man like this one never existed _on_ it. He's gone." She said and couldn't help but smile a little.

"Perhaps," He picked up the dagger from behind it and examined it as if he'd seen it for the first time. "That's why I came I risked everything I had left to find you, Angel."

"What does that supposed to mean?"

"It means that once again you are right and I'm unlikely to fulfil my wildest aspirations of the Whirlwind in its full glory— but I will have to settle for a race war instead." Champion ran two fingers the length of the blade. "I've often been told that information is power, Angel. And right now everything that I've told you," He looked at the ceiling here and there. "Everything that I've told _them_ —your friends in the FBI, will be repeated in a court of law...and soon,"

"Joseph, I—"

" _Save it, Angel_ ," He screamed at her, his lip quivering as he mouthed the words. "I know that they are coming to kill me. But it doesn't matter anymore. I have grown tired of running from them. I am tired of running _after_ him. What matters now is that you and everyone listening know the truth. And you aren't the only ones—I've taken the time and effort to send this classified data to two other parties who would be interested in answering the third question that every American has asked: _What is the Whirlwind?_ Thomas Pepper and the new leader of a House in Chains Christopher Prince will possess the answer to that question just as you will. There will be no earthly way to keep the truth from our adoring public. Thousands died in the streets in this country during the final nights of Scar and Serena's Whirlwind, Angel. How many tens of thousands will parish when this truth is revealed in the weeks to come?"

Angel could hear something rattling just outside the front door and the sliding window behind her.

"So your people have a choice, Angel," He said "They either tell the truth about the knowledge they possess or they become a part of a larger conspiracy. And remember, Angel, the larger the conspiracy bubbles, the more vicious the _pop_ is when the truth finally burst from the cover-up."

Joseph Champion looked like a king ever relaxed in his kingdom even with the knowledge that the FBI would be coming within seconds to prematurely end his reign.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree decided that she couldn't wait even that long.

She squeezed his hand causing his own index finger to engage the firing mechanism of his gun firing a non-lethal but painful round into his left foot.

She got steadily more lethal from there however.

With Champion still screaming and trying to recover from his wound, Angel wrestled the knife from her would be assailant, grabbed it herself and stabbed her former lover through his neck with it like a deadly kiss—

The FBI, led by Agent Tabitha Blue, broke through the front entrance of the cabin with their weapons hot and finished the job she'd started by firing countless rounds into Joseph Champion until he was filled with bloody hole after hole until his dead carcass struck the floor at Angel's feet.

Two more agents dashed past them into the bedroom where hopefully her husband Seth hadn't joined Champion in eternity. Angel heard first responder units climbing the mountain from all sides. The FBI had dispatched a helicopter to patrol the skies against any countermeasures against their people.

Angel lost all of her cohesion...and fell to the floor on her ass. Agent Blue ran over to her secured the knot on her housecoat while she barked out instructions to the remaining agents in the room.

After handing her a glass of water Blue asked: "How did you know, Doctor? How did you tie all of the bits of information Champion was feeding you, about the President, about everything so quickly?"

"It's been a theory of mine," Angel said between baited breaths. She rested her head on her knees. She watched the paramedics wheeled her bloody husband out of the cabin without even a glance in their direction. Seth didn't look good."

Blue wasn't blind to her husband's condition.

"Dr. Hicks Dupree, about what Champion said before. He had a sick, deranged mind but we won't let him win."

"But your people—"

"My people will keep silent—at least long enough for us to find this doctor from the Houston branch of the Center for Disease Control. This is exactly the kind of thing that Sheridan tasked me with when he gave me this job. Give me a chance to do it. I'll have whoever this scientist is either in custody or in a casket soon enough. You have my word on that."

Angel nodded her head, appreciating the younger woman's fierce determination and drive. _Although that won't likely be enough to save us_ , Angel was more than willing to sacrifice herself—willing to risk her freedom for not stating everything that she knew in front of a Grand Jury. Yet, she was far more concerned about how Christopher or Thomas Pepper would react with knowledge of just how far Pandora had gone to end this game of race and relations once and for all.

" _Doctor, can you hear me_?" Agent Tabitha Blue's yelling in her ear brought Angel back from future difficulties back to the troubles of the here and now. "You've been so corporative and helpful in our investigation. We owe you. Is there anything that I can do for you right now? Are you alright?"

Angel heard the ambulance drive away. And when Agent Blue and her team had bagged up Joseph Champion's remains and closed the door behind them she would be alone again. He had not been the only person who had been entrapped tonight.

She would be so very alone.

When Angel smiled at the younger woman she was sure that it couldn't hide the sadness and the wanting for the company that only a bottle had ever provided her.

"Actually, no, Agent Blue, I'm not alright." She said after the longest time. "But then I probably never have been."
Roxanne

Christopher Prince's new residence in Buckhead, March 2012

Four men dressed in black hoodies, khakis and sneakers met Roxanne Sanchez on the curb, verified her ID, but still asked her wait outside Chris' new gated residence on the city's far Westside. The new Peacekeepers seemed much like the ones of old. The last time Roxanne had been this close to a House in Chains military arm she had sprayed rounds of bullets into one of them fighting for right to live trying to escape Carver nearly a year ago. _And if any of you gentlemen dare touch me..._

A bald headed man, skeleton thin, who may have been ten years her elder, greeted Roxanne with a toothy smile, a firm handshake and an apology for her delay. The One—as Chris' people referred to him as—had left instructions for her to be admitted as soon as she showed up on the property. The extra precautions had been his and his alone. A House in Chains had lost a significant number of their governing body in the suicide at the mansion in the fall, but the organization had not been crippled as much as the world had been led to believe. Hundreds of Board and Committee members had been either promoted or reassigned. The man who greeted her finally said that the nature of her relationship with the One wasn't his business, but if she would indulge their over protectiveness of a House in Chains leader for a small while longer—

He walked her in. Where Chris had chosen to become the new regional headquarters of his organization was quite impressive. The architecture matched the bricked layouts of the nearby buildings including a church on the corner. What caught Roxanne's eye specifically were the nuances that had Chris' imprint completely. Next to the American flag were posts of the new banner of a House in Chains that whipped about on this spring day in March. There were busts of great black leaders: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, Isaac Prince and Xavier Prince sat there together side by side. Just above those bust was a larger one of the former President of the United States Adolphus Sweet.

She found his father's mandates lining the sidewalk passage to the front door. All of his sayings and recollections as well as some of those from Xavier were embedded in the concrete as well. Just above the door was a plaque that showcased highlights from Chris' speech from the courtyard of Georgia's State Capital back around November, almost six months ago now.

She finally met Chris inside. He looked up and saw her. He dismissed an underling by patting the smaller man on the shoulder.

"Roxanne," He said by way of greeting. And for the second time within a year his surprise at seeing her in his presence warmed her heart.

"Hi, Chris," He hugged her fiercely. "Wow. You look good."

And he did. He looked as if he had lost an additional ten pounds or so in addition to the 20 that he had already disposed of in the fall. This morning Chris looked as if he'd stepped out of the shower minutes ago after another long intense workout.

Chris showed her to a nearby couch which she found both soft and firm enough for her liking. He had begun drawing again. Roxanne noted that most of the portraits were those of his immediate family. The one woman that she didn't immediately recognize was probably his mother. Roxanne's investigative instincts noted to herself that every picture of Isaac Prince had a drawing of this woman next to it. Although Roxanne had never met either one she could knew for a fact that Xavier's rendition was spot on. And the woman's portrait next to his brother had to be none other than a House in Chains intelligence officer Grace Edwards.

Chris had done two new drawings of the first love of his life Hoshi Givens as well—and bless his heart he had honored the memories of his dead ex-wife and step daughter Denise Prince and Erica Lovings. Every detail, especially the women's facial features were so dead on that it gave Roxanne Sanchez pause. She nearly teared up when she glanced at the portraits a second time.

"Where have you been, Roxanne?" He finally asked her as she could feel him sitting next to her. "I respected you're your request for some time away. You told me that you would contact me when you were ready and for me to wait until you did. I can understand that you needed to tie up some loose ends in your own personal life." She heard the sadness in his voice. "I expected you to be gone maybe a couple of weeks, or maybe a month or so at most, but not six months."

_Does that mean that you've moved on, my love?_ And to be perfectly honest, that had not been a contingency she had considered. _And yes_ , she did not say aloud, she had indeed tie up some loose ends in both her personal life with her mother about the death of her sister Maria...and an unexpected professional matter—a debt that could not go unpaid—and the cost associated with it that she would not soon forget.

But none of that is what kept her away for this long.

"I wasn't going to rest until Joseph Champion was either in custody or dead." She said.

Chris nodded in understanding.

"You've been working underneath Special Agent Tabitha Blue on Sheridan's team."

"I've served more in a consultant capacity. Your former boss wants to keep me in a more unofficial capacity. He said that he had his reasons."

"So Joseph Champion was responsible for the shooting of the president."

She shrugged.

_I don't think that's the case, My Love_. Yet, no one, involved would answer that question, at least to her satisfaction.

_And now comes the most difficult part_. Roxanne was unsure how much Chris and his people knew about Joseph Champion and his renegade band of Pandora. Once again Roxanne's investigative instincts warned her that there was even more to what Blue's people had discovered than they were telling even her.

"Yes, Champion was responsible for Sweet's death in some shape manner or form and paid for the crime with his own life. Your girl, Angel, gutted him up in the mountains Thanksgiving Weekend, but I'm sure you know that already."

"I do."

Roxanne had lived with and around the Dupree's almost night and day for six months. And yet, she was taking care of that other professional matter when that thing went down at the mountain retreat, even though the whole idea of luring Champion with the sudden vacation was her idea in the first place.

"I just want you to know that I'm back, Chris."

"I missed you as well, Roxanne." Chris held her hand in his.

"And I missed you, Chris."

He put his forehead on hers but they did not kiss and for that she was thankful. There was something unpleasant about his breath—about the scent reeking from his pores that wasn't there before she left.

"I needed the time to clear my head as well, Chris. I wasn't sure where I belonged or where I was going next." She stared into his eyes. "I wanted to be sure that we could go further or not."

"Well, you're here, now, Roxanne. You've obviously come to some type of decision."

"I have."

After Roxanne narrated her conclusions about her mother and her sister Chris said, "I understand the pressures of family, Roxanne. If anyone knows about _legacy_ and all that comes with the responsibility of it then it's me."

She nodded.

"What you don't know is that you've saved me, Chris."

"Look, Roxanne," He shook to his head and got to his feet. "We talked about what happened to you down in Mexico before—"

"Then you understand that I would have killed those girls...that I would have done _anything_ to make sure that they didn't return to that cartel family and the hell that would have faced if they had lived afterwards."

"Yea," Chris said ever cautiously. "Yea, I guess that I do."

"No, Chris," She corrected him in a soft tone. "The answer is actually no. Only a monster would understand what I did that day down in Mexico. But then this here is a monster's ball."

"Maybe,"

"Only a monster would have bitched about the way that the FBI conducted its business concerning a perceived entrapment of my sister and then aided and abetted them in rounding up and killing Joseph Champion in the same exact manner."

"Maybe,"

"And maybe, just maybe, it takes a monster to kill another monster." She said and then paused long enough to make sure she had his attention before she spoke again. "One monster tosses a coin up, catches it and tosses it again in the hope that somewhere—someday the opportunity presents itself that he can truly apprehend the thing that the coin represents."

"Maybe," Chris rubbed at his dark jaw, but said nothing else so she continued.

"One night a few weeks ago there is meeting of these monsters at long last—a clash of titans. Someone finally found him after all of this time. Someone finally caught him in the act of a mercy killing. And then it was on. The creature known as Pennywise's reign of terror against the poor and the disfranchised came to an abrupt end in a glorious battle that the few who witnessed it will never forget. Or so I've been told. You happen to know anything about this, Chris?"

"Maybe,"

"I'm in love with you, Christopher Prince."

Chris spun back around with a suddenness that startled her.

"And I love you, Roxanne." He helped her to her feet and into his arms for a long passionate kiss. She fought back against the alcohol smell, she recognized it then, and let her affection for this man guide her. "I believe that I fell in love with you when I first saw you after so many years, that night in the park right after I escaped the siege at the Fox Theatre." He said and leaned in to kiss her once again.

Afterwards he walked her over to where the largest of his portraits sat with a sheet wrapped over the top of it.

"I needed you to be here before I allowed anyone else to see it."

Chris pulled the sheet off.

It was a fabulous rendition of _her_.

Roxanne stared at the mirrored image of herself, biting back tears of gratitude the entire time. And speaking of time—

"I need you to come with me. We still have time to make it."

"We have time to make what, Roxanne," He smiled at her but was confused at the same time. "What in the hell are you talking about?"

"Do you trust me, Chris?"

"Do I trust you?"

"Yes, do you trust me?"

"Of course I do, Roxanne."

"Then I need you to make the necessary arrangements with your people." She kissed him one cheek and then the other. "I need a couple of hours with you alone without Peacekeeper interference. You've saved me Chris and now I want to return the favor."

One hour later the two of them walked through the main gate that led them into Turner Field, home of the hometown Atlanta Braves, the local professional baseball team. Roxanne watched his level of anxiety rise as they drove ever closer to the stadium. She could smell the hotdogs grilling and the peanuts roasting. She could hear the buzz of an early morning season crowd even on a cold night as this one was.

"Look, Roxanne, I understand what you're trying to do here and I appreciate it," Chris was struggling to steady his voice. "But I don't think that I can do this. I don't _want_ to do this."

"While I was gone, Chris, I had to go face to face with some difficult memories of things that I could and could not control during different periods of my life. This is how we survive. I understand how you felt that night when you learned the truth about what your father had done to you. I know that coming back here—right _here_ across the street from where it all started brings it all back to you. You don't want this, Chris. You _need_ this. I'm no doctor like your friend, Angel, but I know your pain. I won't let you go alone, Chris. I won't let go."

"My father sacrificed me to better his cause, Roxanne." Chris said after a long time. "No matter what the greater good might have been, how could a man who loved his son do something so hideous? How am I supposed to ever get over such a thing?"

"You don't," Roxanne answered him. "You never do, not really. You do go on. You rely on the people and the resources that you have in your defense. You trust the ones that you have by your side. You believe in the one's that love you. You believe in the _one_ that loves you."

"I will," Chris fought back tears. "I can try."

"But you will have to do something even more difficult than that, Chris. You will ultimately have to do something that you don't want to do."

"I already know what you are going to say."

"Well then you should know that I mean it," She said. "I'm changing Chris. The one thing that remains in me from the old Roxanne that you knew is my desire to fight you on your vices. I'll help you every step of the way. I love you, Chris, but either the drinking goes or I do."

Chris nodded his answer and let his head collapse on Roxanne's shoulder where she held him there with all of her might.

By the bottom of the ninth the Braves found themselves down by a three runs. They had the bases loaded with two outs and a full count on their cleanup hitter who had failed to produce in his first three at bats.

In the moments after he delivered a grand slam homerun to win the game for the home team Chris Prince and Roxanne Sanchez engaged in a long, glorious kiss.

Afterwards, she looked into the eyes of the only man that she had ever loved. She thought that the Braves weren't the only ones in this town who could stage a rally—who could come back from the dead.

She saw her dark eyes in the reflection as well.

_How could either one of us continue to love a monster_ , she wondered as they filed out of the ballpark with tens of thousands of other patrons into the darkness of the Atlanta night.
Angel

Mississippi River Landing: Memphis, Tennessee, March 2012

"My dear, you look as if you could use a drink?"

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree cocked a brow and smiled sadly. _Am I that obvious_? _Am I that pitiful_ _looking?_ "I'd might, Mrs. Healy, but I'll take a glass of water with a side of lemon instead if you would please."

Lisa Healy, Hugh Keaton's mother, hurried off to retrieve her requested drink from the bar. Agent Blue's report said that this woman had worked at the Mississippi River Park here in Memphis, Tennessee for a couple days a week to supplement her social security for nearly three years now. She had put in enough time that she could ask her boss to give her a full hour's break to speak with an FBI consultant who'd flown over from Atlanta to speak with her.

This establishment planted here on the banks of the Mississippi was filled with noisy regulars and tourist this evening enjoying unseasonably warm day for this point of the spring. Still, it was still enough of a chill for Angel to button the top button of her jacket. The bartender was stirring up miracles, the chef sweetened the air with the smell of beef and pork and fish and the waitresses were marching to beat of their own drum. Angel smoothed out her skirt and crossed one booted leg over the other.

She damn sure could have used that drink—especially after what she'd experienced at the airport flying in. She'd run into a blonde bombshell, a biker at that. He told her that he owned a pawn shop just across the river from Memphis in Arkansas but had been flying back from business in LA. He was short on brains, but long on hair and his ass fit snuggly in his tight jeans the way she liked it. He was definitely her type. Somehow, Angel had politely declined his invitation for a drink or two...but had accepted his address and phone number anyway—

"Young lady, do you hear me?"

"Sorry," Angel bounced herself back into the present. "I'm a little distracted. Thank you for agreeing to see me, especially on short notice."

Lisa Healy waved Angel off with one wrinkled hand off as she made herself as comfortable as one could consider the lack of cushion in these chairs.

"Forgive me, young lady, but sometimes I forget things. I must ask you again, Agent Hicks Dupree, what agency do you work with?"

"I'm a doctor actually," Angel took her first sip of her drink. Gin would have worked so much better—especially against this backdrop. "I'm a Clinical Psychologist by trade. The short story is that for a brief time I was a member...of an organization that treated your son on more than occasion." She stopped long enough to allow the older woman to absorb what she said and to allow a cool breeze to comb her hair. "I was with Hugh when he died near Stone Mountain last year."

Lisa Healy sat back in her chair and looked down the river. Angel switched her leg position and let the information she'd fed the old woman breathe. Agent Tabitha Blue had provided Angel with all of this Intel and location of Hugh's mother in return for the danger that she and her husband Seth had faced down in order to catch Joseph Champion back in the fall. Angel knew that she probably had one hour to make this work. She wouldn't blow it by talking too much, especially here at the onset.

"Oh my," Lisa Healy finally said. "Oh, yes, I guess I understand. What can I help you with?"

_And in speaking of talking too much_. "If you don't mind me saying so, Mrs. Healy, you don't act like you are overly surprised to see someone like me come all of this way to see you here in Memphis." Lisa Healy didn't answer her right away. Angel reached over the half table and locked her fingers into the older woman's wrinkled ones. "You've had other visitors haven't you?"

Lisa found interest in a casino boat chugging its way up the Mississippi with the evening crowd aboard more than happy to gamble today's earnings away. When Hugh Keaton's mother finally looked back at Angel she looked as if she'd aged 20 more years.

"My Hugh was a troubled boy who had grown into a troubled man." She swallowed audibly, even over the chattering of the dinner crowd. "And to answer your question, Doctor, yes, I've had visitors from you people more than once or twice asking about him since his death. When those poor children started going missing in Atlanta, I always envisioned that someone would go digging into my boy's past."

"May I ask who came to see you, Mrs. Healy?"

The older woman folded her arms against her tiny frame, but not against the cooling Memphis day. _She is an old woman. Maybe her memory isn't what_ —

"Are you asking me if a member or members of Pandora came to see me? Why don't you ask me how many times they came to disrupt what little life I've made for myself here instead?" She smiled as she nodded, but there was nothing but sadness scribbled on her wrinkled face otherwise. "Yet, when Serena Tennyson came here about this time a year ago I could only wish that disruption was all that Pandora had brought to my life."

"Serena," Angel struggled to keep her voice down. "She was _here_ in Memphis?"

"Yes,"

Angel squeezed both of the other woman's hands with her own. Lisa Healy looked as if she needed Angel's strength to get through this.

And Angel felt as if she needed Lisa's strength as well.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Angel cocked a brow. " _Will_ you tell me what happened?"

"It wasn't as serious as you think, dear, at least not at first. We did a lot of girl talk like you and I are right now." Lisa's eyes got glassy. Angel felt a nerve twitching in her shoulder. "You would be surprised at what total strangers have in common sometimes."

"I'm sure but I have the feeling that this casual conversation ended with her threating you somehow." Angel put what she said in statement form.

The old woman nodded her head once and a single tear ran down her cheek.

"One of Serena's people handed her a knapsack. She pulled my brother's severed head out of it for starters." Lisa's smile was back and the lack of warmth was ever present as well. "She put it right on the dining room table next to my uneaten peas and potatoes that I had cooked earlier in the day. The two of us sat at the table with my brother's severed head and conversed for a while longer; mostly we talked about Hugh's childhood."

"What happened then?"

"Serena pushed her chair over to where I was seated, pulled out a very large handgun and planted it on my forehead." Lisa's new tears had joined the single one in a race down her slight, wrinkled cheeks. One of the nearby patrons noticed. Angel jumped out of her seat and hoped that Lisa Healy would follow her lead. Two minutes later they were standing in a semi secluded area of the boardwalk although they were both freezing their ass off as the sun began setting in the West. The old woman, to her credit, had gained a small measure of her control back. "When I finished telling her all that I had to say about our past she told me that I deserved to die for what I had allowed to happen to Hugh. She told me that no woman would have disgraced motherhood like I had."

Lisa told Angel the same story that Serena Tennyson had taken to her fiery grave with her. And then she folded her arms over her breast both in exasperation...and _curiosity_ to why Oracle had allowed the old woman to live.

"Why didn't you report this—"

"Report this to whom, young lady?"

"Listen, Mrs. Healy, I know that you were afraid," Angel heard herself say. And she stayed silent a second while she exercised the use of a different tactic. "You survived, Mrs. Healy. You are a survivor. You must have said or done something or the other that she allowed you to get up from that table alive. Serena Tennyson is dead, Mrs. Healy. She's no threat to hurt you any longer. Yet, I' m damned curious to what you said to her that she allowed you to live on?"

Lisa shrugged her bony shoulders.

"She just let me live is all, Doctor. I really wish that I could give you something more professionally more interesting than that explanation. I wish that I could explain it better than that."

Angel kicked at a rock that was littering on the boardwalk and folded her arms again.

"Forgive me, Mrs. Healy," Angel found the composure that she'd momentarily lost. "But it almost sound disappointed that she didn't do you any harm?"

The old woman turned away to watch yet another casino boat cruising down the Mississippi nearly out of their site.

"Angel said, "Mrs. Healy—"

"Let me tell you something, Missy," Lisa frowned and her voice sounded as if the words were being mouthed by another woman. "When you've stunk it up like I've stunk it up over the years, when you've done so much wrong, when you've made mistake after mistake as I have—you expect judgement to cometh...even before His judgement comes."

"But she let you go, Mrs. Healy."

Lisa only nodded at that.

"Serena was in total control. I wouldn't have had time to scream. She was younger than me, of course. She was fit and strong and even if I had escaped her she still had a couple of her other operatives waiting in my living room." Lisa Healy told her. "At the precise moment in time, I was living the last minutes of my life the way that I guess inmates on death row whose stay of execution was over."

Angel found herself turning away this time.

"Why didn't she finish this...?" Angel mumbled louder than she had intended.

"I haven't gone one day, not one single precious day since that evening without asking the same question that you are now, Doctor." Angel heard the old woman speak behind her. "Every day I see my brother's head sitting on that table. And by everything I've read in the papers, everything I've seen in the news in the year since tells me that Serena wasn't known for being merciful to her victims."

Angel shrugged at that and turned to face the old woman again.

"Perhaps Serena felt that you seeing firsthand the gruesome murder of your brother were enough punishment for you both."

"Maybe she did," Lisa's silent frown afterwards spoke volumes to Angel that the doctor could have phrased that last statement better. "But sometimes I think that she allowed me to live long enough to see my boy dying the way she figured he would might be a far sterner punishment." She bit into a clenched fist. "And now my precious boy is gone. I saw it on national TV when it happened. I saw you there as well."

"I'm sorry,"

Lisa patted Angel's hand...and then held it tight in her own. If there had been tension between the two of them over the past few minutes it had passed with the last gust of cool wind.

"It's alright, Doctor. My faith tells me that I've already been forgiven for my mistakes." She glanced at her tiny watch.

Can I ever be forgiven for what I've done? Will God forgive me? What about Seth? What about Christopher?

"I know that you have to get back to work soon." After a moment of silence Angel said: "I'm sorry to disturb your life once again, Mrs. Healy. I shouldn't have come here to Memphis at all."

"But you did come, dear. We all learn to live with our decisions, Doctor. Whether I am forgiven or not I'll spend however days I have left coping with the decisions I've made. My precious boy is dead. Look at me though, I'm clean and sober for one of the few times in my life. I'm doing...okay financially. I'm just an old working girl. I'm trying to have some of the things that I couldn't provide us when Hugh was a small boy."

"I tried to save him," Angel found herself suddenly saying. "I tried to reach out to him... _all_ of him. I tried to get inside to his core. I want you to believe that about my relationship with your son."

"I do believe you, Doctor," Lisa Healy pulled Angel in for a fierce a hug as an old, scrawny woman could provide. "In the end—at the end the four of us failed him equally. You, I and Serena all failed Hugh at crucial points of his life, Doctor, but _she_ alone failed him in the end."

She.

Angel pulled herself away from the older woman's embrace with considerable effort.

What she saw next in Lisa Healy's brown eyes was something she would not soon forget.

It looked as if someone had placed a dark mask over the other woman's face. It was if a dark cumulous cloud was blanketing an otherwise docile woman that stood here on this boardwalk only a minute ago.

"What do you mean by that," Angel worded her question more carefully this time. "Who is this fourth person that you are referring to?"

"Serena left my kitchen that night promising to watch over my Hugh for as long as she could. She said that she would be his guardian unlike one that he'd ever had before. She promised to keep him from harm. But then she can't keep her promises if your friends in the FBI killed her too."

Angel kept her tone and her answer neutral.

"She died a few hours after your son did."

Lisa Healy shook her head back and forth until Angel was sure the woman's brains were rattling inside.

"Don't be silly, Doctor," Lisa smiled but the darkness cast over her had remained. "Serena Tennyson is very much alive and she's with _her_ now."

And as shocking as Lisa's proclamation was it would be her final words that both shocked Angel into disbelief—and answered the question to why Serena Tennyson had allowed Hugh Keaton's mother to live that night nearly a year earlier.

Two very long hours later Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree found herself lying nude in Brad's—the Blonde from the airport—bed sipping on her sixth or seventh shot of gin. In fact, after she drained the last glass she sat the glass on the nearby nightstand and angled for the bottle from which the shots had come.

She saw Brad watching her out of the corner of his blue eyes.

The sun had set. If she hurried she would still have time to make her flight back to Atlanta for the connector flight home to Macon and her devoted husband Seth. She would still have time to save the last of her dignity. _It is still time to stop this before it starts_. Sure, they'd played around a little and drank a lot. They'd touched a few body parts that belonged to the other, yet they had not crossed the barrier to intercourse. She hadn't had sex with any man other than her husband since her trip to Atlanta the night 411 was unleashed on that city and the world.

Seth, her husband, who was both physically and mentally recovering from his ordeal in the cabin at the hands of Joseph Champion was at home awaiting her return. The attending physician told her much later that another 30 minutes or so of bleeding and he would not have survived that night.

Anyway, Seth had suffered some temporary memory loss as a result of lack of oxygen flowing back and forward to his brain. In fact, the therapy he was enrolled in right now didn't seem to be aiding his bouts of long term memory lapses. _You still have time to stop this_ , she thought again. And yet, she looked over her bare shoulder at him anyway. She had a ton of problems back in her life. This man would be a welcome distraction—especially considering the Grand Jury testimony still to come about her involvement with Serena Tennyson, Pandora, and her role in what history would remember as the newest round of Atlanta Child Murders.

And then there was always the X factor known as Christopher Prince and how he would react to her testimony and revelations about what she knew about Erica Lovings murder and when she knew them. And even worse, she would have to speak aloud about her interactions with Hugh Keaton earlier could have...might have nudged Keaton ever closer to the edge that placed Atlanta's children directly in harm's way.

"Thank you, Brad. Thank you for everything that you've done for me this evening." She leaned over and planted a close mouthed kiss on the man's lips. "You have been a very tempting distraction. The truth is that I've overstayed my welcome as it is."

"Really," This, the most beautiful of men kidded her back but thankfully kept his hands to himself. One glance between his legs told her that he was horny—but he wasn't desperate or stupid enough to take this any further than she wanted to go. "Let me push this idea your way. Why don't you reschedule your flight? I'll pay for the difference for your airfare." He pulled his credit card from out of his wallet and laid it in the tiny space between them on the bed. "Spend the night with me. I guarantee you that this night won't be one either one of us will forget it."

Angel stood up naked and unashamed.

"I shouldn't," She smiled as she said it. "I can't." She let her smile float away. "I have to go."

"You have to go, but you are staying anyway?"

After a minute of thought and nude pacing Angel said, "I'm not going to make you any promises, Brad."

"I wouldn't think of asking you to."

She awoke in the middle of the night as naked as she was before. Brad had left her a note that there had been a break in at his shop in Arkansas and he had to attend to it and didn't want to wake her. Perhaps they could truly finish what they'd started here another time. He left the hotel rooms' key on his pillow and asked her to lock up and turn the key in when she left. He left his cell phone number and thanked her for a wonderful time.

She sat up against the bedpost and ran her fingers through her unkempt hair. She drowned what was left in the gin bottle, felt suddenly disgusted with the drink's taste and the predicament she'd allowed to fester, got up, and poured the last drops of it down the drain.

She fell to the porcelain floor in the shower crying.

And while the steamed water pounded her back, all Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree could think about was the final few words that Hugh Keaton's mother had ushered to her while they stood together along the banks of the Mississippi River.

_Don't be silly, Doctor_ , Lisa had smiled but the darkness that cast over her had remained. _Serena Tennyson is very much alive and with_ her _right now._

_What?_ Angel had remembered saying then. _That's quite impossible, Mrs. Healy._

_Well of course it's possible, dear._ The old woman said as if to question the sanity of Angel or anyone else who didn't believe this to be true. _Serena told me that she'd only gone through a_ _Baptism by Fire when that truck exploded with her in the back of it after her arrest during a Whirlwind. She told me that she'd seen me in the flames. She told me that I was her other wing that she'd searched high and low for all of her life._

_Oh my God_ was all that Angel could mentally put into in coherence of speech then and now.

_My dear, you thought that I was referring to you letting my boy down—now that's just plain silly,_ Angel heard the old woman say that then. _I let my boy down; Serena in turn did the same when she failed to protect him as she said she would. And the Dragon, our blessed Dragon that sits high and looks down low let him down in the end. I saw it in the flames_.

Mrs. Healy please stop it—

_Now don't you fret about this one second longer, Doctor,_ The old woman had continued as if Angel hadn't spoken at all. And her grip on the Doctor's hand had become vice like. _But I do_ _pity you, oh yes I do, Doctor. Serena saw in her flames what you are soon to face. And I have seen it too. This body of mine is likely to meet its end soon—and I will join Serena and we will fly off into eternity with the Dragon. Our Baptism into the fire will at last be complete._

Angel had wanted to escape the woman's grip then.

She could not.

She _did_ hear her words.

But we can look down and pity the loneliness that you are certain before the flames take you at last.

Dr. Angle Hicks Dupree could still hear Lisa Healy's words over the shower's waterfall.

And the words were growing louder by the minute.
Chris

New South Cemetery, March 2012

Angel nudged him by grabbing his coat sleeve and whispered hot breath in his ear that she wanted—no she _needed_ to speak with him in private.

He glanced back, asked her if it could wait until after the ceremony ended...he could see her working it over in her mind.

And then Angel shook her head _no_ she couldn't wait that long.

And then, just as suddenly, she changed her mind again.

The One could see that his childhood friend was troubled. He probably stared a little too long because he thought that there were tears falling underneath her thick shades—or were those wet streaks the aftermath of the downpour that had been going on all morning.

The three of them drove to the cemetery in separate cars. Chris rode in the family car with four of his Peacekeepers in tow. Roxanne drove her own car as close to the big Lincoln as she could. Angel settled for bringing up the rear riding shotgun with her husband Seth.

This impromptu ceremony was Roxanne's idea.

The love of his life seemed to be full of ideas lately. He had to agree though, that this one was long past due.

He heard each car door slam as the ones who were still closest to him met him by the new gravesite. He'd had his father's remains removed from that middle school where Serena Tennyson had housed them for so long moved here. He now had his old man's bones, both his biological mother and step mother lined up in the same section as his brother Xavier. One aisle over were the gravesites of Denise Prince and his step daughter Erica Lovings.

He'd done this all at a considerable expense his new Circle of a House In Chains had more than willing to pay as a gift for his inauguration as the new One. He thankfully denied their offering and paid for this out of his severance packet that he'd received after over two decades working for the federal government.

Chris' best friend in the world stood to one side of him holding hands with her husband. Chris had always thought of the Gray Man as slightly aloof, but he looked even more distracted than he'd ever seen him before. Angel leaned over to him and whispered in his ear that he should meet her in the park after the ceremony ended. He silently nodded in agreement.

And yet, Chris couldn't help but steal glances at Seth. Angel had told him that her husband had been rapidly improving in a physical sense the past few weeks after his near death experience in that cabin in Northern Georgia when they nabbed Joseph Champion...but Angel also said that he was struggling more and more each day with retaining events from his long term memory.

Four Peacekeepers guarded his immediate surroundings while at least a dozen more heavily armed men set up a perimeter. He knew that he would have been fine even without their help, but he didn't argue when the Circle asked for him to carry this heavy a detail around with him today. Many of these folks served a House in Chains—had served his brother Xavier in one capacity or the other—

They felt Xavier's loss as much as he did, especially after the insurrection led by Quincy Morgan led to his murder. _And many of them believe what I believe...that if Xavier had lived through the night that the mass suicide that the others planned during Scar's waning hours would not have come to be._

And in speaking of that tragedy... Chris had wanted to add Grace Edwards's body to those who were here in this burial ground but her family politely, but sternly refused his offer. He understood.

The new Deputy Director of the FBI, Nicholas Sheridan, had sent flowers and a carefully crafted but genuine statement that showed the man's kindness. He apologized for his absence and mentioned that he had an urgent matter to personally speak to him about at Chris' earliest convenience.

Special Agent Tabitha Blue sent nothing.

Yet, the biggest surprise of the morning was still to come.

Thomas Pepper exited as quickly and his bulk allowed him and was immediately seated in a wheel chair by an old woman who began pushing him up and over to the gravesite. Chris laid a single hand on the largest of the Peacekeeper's shoulders and the big man greeted the old woman half way. She thanked him kindly as the Peacekeeper wheeled Thomas over to where the remainder of the mourners stood.

If Dr. Seth Dupree didn't look well then Thomas Pepper was a dead man riding. He didn't look anything like the man Chris last saw trying to aid the FBI nab Serena Tennyson in that hotel without further incident six months ago. He'd dropped 50 pounds easily. He had dark circle camped out underneath his eyes. He gave Chris and the others only a faint nod in acknowledgement of his arrival. Chris decided after a few awkward minutes that Thomas either didn't speak to him because he didn't know what to say, or because he lacked the strength to say it.

So Christopher Prince stooped as low as his own frame allowed and wrapped a single arm around the frail looking man and hugged him instead.

Thomas Pepper's face was a casserole of emotions.

Roxanne Sanchez looked as emotional as she released him after all of the tributes had been paid, after all of the tears had been shed, and after some goodbyes had been said.

Chris needed Roxanne.

Chris needed a drink nearly as much.

Chris needed the smallest measure of peace that he knew he was never going to find.

He hid his discomfort by twisting back around and peering at the gravesite of his loved ones one last time.

No man should ever bury his family.

No man should, but Christopher Prince was going to bury his.

He had the love of his life standing next to him, but the path that he'd chosen to walk as the One of a House in Chains had altered his path forever.

He searched the gray sky, he searched the headstones of his father and brother and then he searched the eyes of the woman that he loved so very dearly for a sign—any sign that he would receive absolution for all of his past sins.

He was now more certain than ever that that day would never come.
Chapter Twenty Nine

My fellow Americans we are fast approaching the first anniversary of the Atlanta Race Riots. It is a date and headline that is more of a symbolic than accurate when accounting for the violence and civil unrest that happened here in and around these grounds where I am standing. Nonetheless, we will continue, even today, even at this hour to seek out answers to all of the delicate questions that have arisen in the days since. Granted, some of these questions may linger with us indefinitely. In the meantime, we must revisit the events over the next few days, weeks and years and learn why such animosity swells and flourishes into the tragic undertaking it became. As a nation we must learn from our mistakes. We must adapt and change. Yet, I think that most importantly, we must bridge the gap in understanding, respect and tolerance between the two prevalent races in what is still the greatest nation on this planet.

_-Anthony Lavell, the_ second _Black President of the United States_
Angel

Hubert Park Neighborhood Park; SW Atlanta, March 2012

Christopher said, "I know this place."

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree took off her hat and unbuttoned her coat, with what seemed like a daily rainstorm finally ending after a 30 minute downpour. She cautiously limped down the hill towards the playground and angled towards the swings. The weather was warming at its own pace after the rain had passed. The birds were singing and rejoicing. The four Peacekeepers assigned to Christopher's security detail weren't so jovial. She knew that they were probably still muttering their complaints and curses after he'd ordered them to allow this conversation between himself and his childhood friend to go on without their interruption.

Seth, to her surprise, had accepted her explanation as well when asked him to stay in the car and wait for her to return. She saw Roxanne raise her eyebrows, hopeful that she would go through with it.

"Of course you recognize it, silly,"

Chris looked as if he were taking it all in again—and for the first time as well.

"This was our place."

"Yea," Angel's smile rivaled her best friend's. "Yea, a very long time ago this was our place, Christopher."

"Damn," He walked around and touched the swings as if he were assuring himself that they were real. "I'm out in this area quite a bit in my work...well at least I used to pass through this neighborhood after a day's work in the field office. It's amazing how you look at something every day yet you never actually _see_ it. Damn," He repeated himself. "How could I almost forget this place was here?"

Christopher took off his coat jacket, rolled up the sleeves and tossed it over a nearby branch. He was looking so fit. He'd kept the weight off since the drastic weight loss he'd started after Serena's last night on this—

Don't think about Serena. Don't think about Lisa Healy...

Unfortunately, she recognized the redness—the dullness that shadowed over his eyes that wasn't from crying at the ceremony earlier or from lack of sleep.

Angel knew a budding drunk when she saw one.

"Yes, this old girls is still standing, Christopher," Angel patted the metal in the middle of the slide with some affection. She ended up having to rub the rust off of her fingers. "She's survived being underfunded, the chaos of the 1996 Olympic Games, two earthquakes and Serena's Whirlwind that rampaged right down there on Clemons Street."

Christopher let loose with a low whistle.

Angel knew that it was past time to get on with this. And yet, it was Christopher who beat her to it.

"I'd remembered when you'd walk up to my bedroom window every day during our summer vacation."

"It wasn't every day, Christopher."

" _Every day_ ," He said with some finality. You would lean on my window sill with your hands in motion like this," He made a pushing motion that Angel recognized almost immediately. She used to use the hand action as a signal to him to come outside and push her on the swings. Of all of the playground equipment, Angel had always loved the swings best.

"I would," She nodded and her lips boasted a full smile. She sat down on the driest swing she could find. "I especially would do that after getting on your nerves about whatever a preteen gets on the nerve of a teenager about. I'd see you in the bedroom and hit you with the most pathetic gaze I could muster."

Christopher laughed. It was the most wonderful sound in the world.

"They were pathetic, Doc,"

"I know." The memory of one specific smile and result brought another smile to her face. "But I would wait for you to motion with your hands like you were doing pushups like I just did and I knew that you would be outside to push me on the swings again. It was always your personal way of letting me know that no matter how much I had aggravated or angered you that you had forgiven me. It was your private way of telling me that everything was alright."

Chris nodded through her last spill.

"I know, Doc. Believe it or not, I've always been hip to your schemes—always sharper than you gave me credit for."

Angel hugged the iron chains tightly and lifted her weight off the ground.

"Well, Christopher, if you were as smart as you claim to have been, how come you always fell for my act?"

"I didn't," Chris' smile lid up his dark face on an otherwise murky day. "Okay, it didn't work every time."

"Yes, Christopher, it worked every time."

"Come on, Doc," He said. "Sometimes I actually wanted to do other things...you know like play basketball with the fellas or go and chase some girls my age or perhaps a little older."

"Whatever, Christopher," She replied. "I really think you got some perverse pleasure from purposely keeping my in suspense long after you knew that you would give in once again."

"Maybe, maybe I did, Angel." Christopher's tone had grown more serious. "I've always given in to you, even when you did the most screwed up things. That's how we ended up sleeping together that one time. Yea, you were there for me when I was growing through it after Hoshi passed but—but that shit could have ruined a wonderful friendship." He shook off something rattling off in his bald head. "I'm always forgiving you for something." Christopher's stance had grown almost defensive. "I've got this feeling over the past few months that something has been bugging you. Why did you bring me back to place, Angel? What in the hell do you need forgiveness for this time?"

"Would you push me one more time?"

Christopher frowned in confusion, but finally took his familiar place behind her and began to push her higher and higher until her stomach was tying up in tiny knots. It was wonderful. It was terrifying.

It was like it had always been before.

"You need to hear this from me before I take the stand up in Washington DC in front of the Grand Jury tomorrow morning."

"Are you talking about the final testimony about your role during that small stint you spent with Serena Tennyson and Pandora?"

"Yes,"

"Alright, Doc," He continued to push her on a rotating basis. "Shoot,"

"I'm responsible for much of Keaton's acceptance of his Hugh persona. The strength that he'd gained from our psychological sessions probably gave him the push he needed to go with on with his plans to kidnap Moses Jackson and Atlanta's other's missing children."

"We've discussed all of this before, Doc," He said, but his voice rattled in discomfort. "I'd read all of your reports. I know all of this—"

"Then you know _nothing_ , Christopher," Angel exhaled in exasperation. Chris hands were warm on her back with every push. "When Serena Tennyson recruited me, I was already having therapy sessions with Hugh Keaton. He had been a patient of mine off and on for years. I thought I had been getting to the heart of his ailments. I thought that I needed to engage the Hugh persona if I was going to gain any knowledge or reach any acceptable level for treatment for him. I thought I had rehabbed him."

"And you were at least partly successful, Angel, congratulations." Yet, Christopher's tone mocked the words that were coming out of his mouth. "And we all know how this story turned out. While this man was embedded in his Hugh persona, as you call it, he killed Erica in order to help Serena get under my skin. Can we let this go already?"

"There is more, Christopher," Every word she said was softer than the one that came before it as she stopped her swinging motion and glanced over her shoulder at him. "You need to hear this."

"No I don't, Angel, save it. I don't need to hear another word about him. I love you with all my heart, Angel. You are the sister that I never had. I love Roxanne Sanchez with all of my heart as well. Yet, either one of you will let the past _go_." He kicked around some dirt and then he said, "Damn, I need a drink."

Christopher stormed off towards where he would summon the senior lieutenants of his Peacekeepers to drive him back to his new residence on the city's far Westside. She knew she was running out of time and opportunity to do this. She had to find the will and courage to resolve this once and for all—"

"Keaton didn't kill Erica, Christopher." She had sprinted past him as fast as her gimpy leg would allow her and was facing him down. "Joseph Champion killed your step daughter. And at least part of me knew what both men were capable of before Nicholas Sheridan recruited me to come here to Atlanta to aid in the 411 investigations. My therapy sessions may have been the thing that emboldened Keaton. My lessons may have directly provoked this man into committing the second round of kidnapping that the world had come to know as the Atlanta Child Abductions and subsequent Murders."

Christopher took one giant step forward. His neck was bulging and his throat was throbbing.

" _What_?" The man's voice went deep and dark with anger. " _What in the hell did you just say_?"

"I...I _knew_...or at least I suspected that both men were likely involved in what they both ended up doing. I was torn up about it. I had a lot going on in my life even before your former boss asked me to come here. I had my drinking. I had been a bad wife. Anyway, the night that Joseph Champion had come to see me we had decided to commit to a suicide pact. He claimed to want to end it all. I meant to see it through—at least this time. Yet, as the night went on and the drinking and the sex between us went on..."

"And what about the makeshift scenes that we examined with the dolls that we took for avatars of the missing children,"

"It was Champion again," She chose the tenor of next sentence carefully. "If you'll remember back to those days, I strongly suggested to you and the rest of the FBI that Keaton didn't have the mental make up to create those models that we were left behind for us to find. But there was more: We thought Serena was using Champion, but it turns out that it was the other way around. Serena was misguided maybe even a delusional. Champion was something else entirely. He had aligned himself with men like James Carter—with men who had nothing but hatred in their minds and hearts for People of Color and always will." Angel wouldn't tell Christopher about the true nature of the poison that had taken President Sweet and Mayor Johnson from the face of the earth before their time. She wouldn't reveal to him what she knew about his plans for a mass extermination of her friend's race from the planet. Champion had either been bluffing or lying about sending the information about Pandora Red's plans to Christopher and Thomas Pepper because both of them still seemed oblivious of it so far. The ball was still in her court. If it was written that she would lose his love to protect the lives of potentially millions of others—then that would be what was written. If it she had to sacrifice all of the angels in Heaven to save Heaven itself then so be it.

Christopher still hadn't opened his mouth to say anything further and it frightened her to the bone.

"Christopher, I'm sorry,"

All he gave her in return was silence.

She tried to rest her hand on one of his shoulders, but he shrugged it off with emphasis.

" _Don't touch me_ ," He spat out. " _Don't. Touch. Me_."

They both waited the silence out.

"Say something, Christopher," She finally could stand the hush no longer. All he did in response was to do a roundabout to avoid her, speeding up faster and faster, while she struggled to keep up the pursuit on her damned gimpy leg. " _Tell me that you hate me, Christopher—tell me that you forgive me, but Goddamn you, please don't leave me like this._ Don't leave me alone. You're my best friend. You're the _only_ friend I have in this whole world."

He shocked her by stopping his motion and spinning around so fast that they nearly knocked foreheads.

" _Leave this place, Angel_ ," He spat words again. Christopher's people had taken considerable interest in their conversation as it had escalated in pace and volume. Angel saw Roxanne, merely a finely crafted silhouette with her arms crossed in the distance. Seth's gray eyes were wide-eyed as he worked his way through the park with purpose. Angel could imagine this situation getting out of hand in a hurry. Christopher noted their audience as well and lowered his voice. "I want you to walk away from this place while you still can."

Angel stood in that same block of space for a long time after she heard the car engine driving the only friend she'd ever known away from the park—and out of her life.

Her husband Seth looked like a statue in the park. The shadow that was Roxanne Sanchez finally moved away an inch at a time to comfort the man she loved—and give him space at the same time.

Angel cried.

With the exception of her devoted husband, Seth she knew that Dragon's prediction of her isolation was all but true. Serena Tennyson had been proven nearly right. Lisa Healy had been proven nearly correct as well.

And yet their gods had been proven wrong—at least for now. There was one silver lining in an otherwise dark room. _I only lay down with you, Brad_. She had told herself over and again since that day in Memphis _. I didn't have sex with you, Brad_.

And if she had, the Gray Man wouldn't ever know anyhow.

She was getting better. She _was_ better.

Perhaps Christopher would come around after his initial anger had had its say and his true feelings surfaced.

She was _alive._

As long as she lived, her redemption was possibly still at hand.

Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree was alive.

And yet, she felt so very alone.
Seth

Congressional Hearing Room 6; Washington, D.C., March 2012

The Grand Jury marched back into court and took their anointed place to Dr. Seth Dupree's left.

None of them looked in his or any of the few people who had been allowed to see these proceedings in person. It irked him, just a little, that these 12 people could carry the verdict of a man's spouse without even having to look at him.

Seth Dupree stood in his accustomed spot in this courtroom as he had in the days since this Grand Jury had convened. Soon after, Angel and her lawyer, who was a tall drink of water entered the scene and took their familiar places. The federal prosecutor, whose nose hairs were killing time above his top lip, looked confident and stood on the opposite of the room with his hands clamped in front of him. Finally, the judge made it a perfect attendance for all the outstanding parties involved spoke into his mike and informed everyone that they could be seated.

He read through some preliminary instructions to the Grand Jury and when he spoke again he said: "Ms. Chairperson, Have you reached a verdict in the case of the State of Georgia against Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree?"

"We have your honor,"

"Very well," He said and encouraged the defendant and her lawyer to stand up.

He saw as his wife glanced momentarily in his direction before paying her full attention back to the judge and jury. Seth could feel his heart thumping in his chest. There was no doubt in his mind that his wife had committed wrongdoings—but he didn't want to see her locked away like some common criminal.

He flashed her one of his best smiles though he truly wasn't feeling what the smile represented one bit.

And he felt it fade just as quickly as Christopher Prince entered the courtroom. The man's appearance drew the attention from everyone already seated inside, especially Angel and the judge herself. Why would the new leader of a House in Chains come here? _And more importantly, whose guest is he as this invitation only affair of the federal government?_

It took four solid minutes for the judge to quiet the room down enough to allow the chairperson to announce that Angel was not guilty on three relatively minor occurrences of conspiracy.

Seth knew that it was time for them all to learn her fate on the more serious offenses.

The judge cleared his voice and studied the verdict before speaking further.

"On the indictment of conspiracy to participate in the kidnapping of six Atlanta minors, with the subsequent loss of lives of two of those children, how do you find?"

"We find the defendant, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree, not guilty."

Seth could see his wife literally sigh in relief just as he could feel himself doing the same. Angel's lawyer flashed his wife a stern look and Seth recognized it immediately: _She knows this isn't over. There is one significant charge left._

"On the indictment of conspiracy to commit terrorist attacks on or against a person or persons of the United States of America on April 11, 2011, how do you find?"

"We find the defendant, Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree," The Chairperson paused for breath and then said, "We find the defendant _guilty_."

Noises, both loud and soft, shot through the small crowd in the courtroom. The Judge pounded his gavel repeatedly to retain order in his courtroom. Seth launched himself out of his seat. Chris Prince's face was empty of emotion and betrayed little else.

Angel looked ill. She leaned on her lawyer for physical support.

"Dr. Hicks Dupree if you would remain standing," The Judge said without looking at her.

Angel's lawyer said, "Judge, on behalf of my client, I respectfully submit to this court that I plan to appeal this verdict to the appellate courts—

The Judge nodded as if he'd heard this motion in his courtroom before.

"This is your right, of course, Counselor," He finally lifted his bald head from his notes. "But before you waste a perfectly good stamp or courier with those papers you may wish to hear me out first."

"Your Honor," The Prosecutor's victorious expression had melted away. "I don't understand. The Grand Jury has spoken—"

"Counselors, you have done your job, the jury had done theirs based upon the evidence that was presented in front of them." He said patiently. "I'll respectfully remind both of you that I am the one who is solely responsible for the sentencing portion of this hearing. In other words, you two would be wise to shut up if you will, sit down if you might, and let me do my job."

"Yes, sir," Both lawyers managed to sound magnanimous.

"I have taken into account all of the sworn written, recorded and spoken testimony in this case. I also was given confidential, detailed bureau information about the doctor's tireless efforts in bringing perpetrators of one of the greatest civil fiasco's I've witnessed in my life to justice."

"Your Honor," The Prosecutor overstated the obvious. "This is highly irregular,"

The Judge nodded once.

"You are damned right it is. The key point here is whether it is _lawful_ or not? I can site you enough case law to keep you up well your bedtime every night this week going through it if you like." And when no one dared to respond the Judge continued. "I've heard directly from the newly appointed Director of the FBI, Nicholas Sheridan, Special Agent Tabitha Blue, noted author Thomas Pepper and retired Hostage Negotiator Justin Ryan who seemed to have a soft spot for the Doctor. I also have letters from former patients, colleagues, teachers, parents of five of Atlanta's missing children who were recovered and Mrs. Fredrick's entire third grade class at Brown Elementary School. You spoke to those kids over there, Dr. Hicks Dupree?"

"Yes, your honor," Angel bit back a smile. "I've spoken there once week for the last six months about the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse."

The Judge sat back in his chair, bit on the frame of his eyeglasses and Seth heard his voice take on a more serious tone.

"Those who have testified on your behalf come from different backgrounds and beliefs and motivations yet they all share one constant opinion: They all believe that this sad chapter in our country's history would have not been brought to a close in the timespan it had without your assistance. You put yourself through a considerable amount of personal as well as professional peril to help find those children before..." The Judge let the last word fade into the oblivion that it deserved. "The Deputy Director went as far as to say that he has confidential information, sensitive to continuing investigations that this madness would have escalated to an unfathomable level without this woman's intervention that concluded with putting a stop to Joseph Champion; a man who has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt as the mastermind behind the assassination of a President of the United States. Adolphus Sweet is not a man who I voted for, but he was an honorable, distinguished officer in service to a nation that he loved. I respect men like that."

Angel's lawyer said, "My client acknowledges Mr. Sheridan's area of expertise in these matters, Judge.

"As well she should, Counselor," The Judge sat erect and directed his full attention on Angel. Seth felt himself tense. "Doctor, are you an alcoholic?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

The Judge scribbled on a legal pad.

"I realize that you have been receiving treatment for your addiction. I will say that I am not pleased with your progress. So I am assigning you to one of the finer drug and alcoholic rehabilitation center in this county for the next 90 days for another round of treatment. You should not expect your recovery to be simple, Doctor. And I want you to keep in mind that this is an offer that you cannot refuse."

Angel nodded.

The Judge leaned over his bench and made an ominous face that dared anyone in the courtroom to challenge his final ruling.

"I am suspending any jail time as long as you complete the program as I've instructed. But before you celebrate too loudly there is this: I am stripping you of all your medical licenses for practicing clinical or any other type psychology. When you exit your treatment you will need to seek out a new profession as a means to continue to be self-supporting."

"Of course, your Honor," Angel looked as if she'd swallowed a whole lot of somethings that were sour. "Thank you for giving me a second chance."

"This is so ordered," The Judge slammed the gavel down one last time. "We are done with our business here, court is adjourned."

When they reached the hallway outside the courtroom, Seth watched Angel and her lawyer as they met with the mass of media that descended on the two women like flies on an open buffet.

Christopher Prince seized the opportunity to escape the courtroom with as little fanfare as his new found position as a House in Chains new One. He and Seth made eye contact. Seth had been struggling with bouts of memory loss, but his pent up disdain for this man during the earliest hours of 411 had not. _How could I have been such a fool? How could he have hated such a good and honorable and loyal man as this one?_

Seth wanted to say something to Chris but he didn't want to let a poor choice of words or a misunderstood meaning get in the way.

Yet, it was the other man who made an offer to the Gray Man instead.

Chris stuck out his hand—and Dr. Seth Dupree shook it and held it there for a long time.

"Good luck to you, Doctor," Chris said, "He looked over his shoulder at his childhood friend and flashed some type of pushing motion with his hands that Seth quickly gathered as a signal that only the two of them would understand. "You're going to need every last ounce of it. I love your wife like the sister I never had. Sometimes siblings have a caring and forgiveness for one another that no other relationship can endure. I don't know if you can fully understand that."

"That is where you are wrong, Chris," The Gray Man found himself saying. "I can understand it. And yet, our relationship as husband and wife has nothing to do with luck as you mentioned before—none of this does."

And then Christopher Prince disappeared out of a side door.

Five minutes later, Angel hopped into his arms and kissed him open mouthed. She was smiling from ear to ear with her lips in full bloom. She had cried along the route between leaving the courtroom, talking to the reporters and limping over to where he was.

"I'll be going away for a while, Seth," She looked like a new woman. She looked as if the burdens of this world had been lifted off of her shoulders. She couldn't have been more wrong. "I will be back again. We'll be back. We can start over again."

"Start over, huh?"

"Of, course," Angel's smile waned a little. "Look, Seth, I'm sorry about you having to be embarrassed about hearing my sorry history in front of strangers like that. It isn't fair that you had to be subjected to all my drinking, my infidelities...all of my personal demons once again."

"I'm not concerned about what was said back there, Angel," Seth said cautiously, "Some of those incidents were from a long time ago. What I am concerned with is the here and now. I'm disappointed in the fact that you haven't changed, My Love. I don't think that you ever will. What everyone has seen on display in an essence is who you are, Angel."

Angel cocked a brow in confusion.

"I don't understand what you mean by that, Seth," She said in a low tone. Seth dried one of her tears. "Seth, I've been totally honest with you about everything. Look, I'm sure that you'll find this corny, but I feel cleansed by this entire experience. I'm going to kick this drinking thing."

"No you're not, Angel," Seth said without anger. "You're not going to stop the drinking or the sleeping around. Especially now, that they've taken what little there was of your career from you. You have nothing left. And with nothing left to lose you are bound to get worse than you already are. Everyday more of who you _really_ are will rise to the surface. I can't live with this any longer. I can't live with you and what you are anymore. I'm sorry. You can't come home again."

Angel stood there and glared into his gray eyes for a very long time.

"You _know_ don't you," Angel's lips parted into a serviceable O. "Somehow...you know...Memphis...Brad."

"Yes," Seth owed her that truth. "I know because I planted him in that airport and into your life."

"Why? Why would you do such a thing?"

"I know _you_ , Angel," He said. "I know what turns you on. You made it easy."

"Seth, you are a son of a bitch. You actually set me up."

"I did."

Angel made some type of movement with her mouth.

"Look, Seth, I can't be angry with you. Why would I ever be angry with you? Yet, if you set me up you know that I didn't have intercourse with him." Seth frowned at her proclamation as weak as it was. "Alright, Seth, we had drinks—we had a _lot_ of drinks, but I didn't have sex with him. It never went beyond drinking and talking, even when he pushed. I did that much, Seth. I at least overcame that temptation."

" _No_ ," Seth heard his voice fall to a dangerously low decibel that he'd never heard in it before. "No you didn't overcome temptation at all."

"Look, Seth, I don't know what Brad or whatever his name was told you—"

"You don't get it do you, Angel," Seth had to do something with his hands to keep from grabbing her here in this courthouse. He was reminded of the confrontation down in Macon nearly a year ago, while the FBI waited outside for her to escape with them for Atlanta. "Your test wasn't to see if you would sleep with another man, Angel. Your test revolved around you allowing yourself to be put in yet another bad situation that could compromise our marriage— that would compromise _me_."

"Seth," Angel couldn't find any more words...but she did find more tears though. "Seth, I didn't realize—"

" _But you should have_ ," The Gray Man found his fury at long last and it was liberating in its intensity. "Angel, I nearly died a thousand times over in the streets of Atlanta trying to reach you when I found out that Roxanne Sanchez wanted you dead. I have to live the rest of my life every night seeing that reign of terror that Quincy Morgan and his Peacekeeper's let loose after dark. Right now I'm struggling to remember moments of my distant past after bleeding out from a madman named Joseph Champion that you took as a lover, Angel. I can't remember my friend's names sometimes that have now moved on to eternity, Angel, but I will never forget _these_ things, ever." Seth paused both for breath and a vain attempt to collect himself. "After all of this, after this abomination that was our marriage you expect me to come back to you. I promised myself that I would stay by yours side to allow this Grand Jury thing to play itself out...but no further. If there was any chance of us saving our marriage it went out the window the moment when stepped into that hotel room with Brad."

"Please, Seth," She grasped at his bicep, but just like their marriage, it was all slipping out of her hands. He pulled away and walked off. " _I will do better, Seth. Don't leave me alone. I'm begging you not to leave me alone. Serena told me that I would suffer from loneliness. It would be my personal Whirlwind."_

Seth spun around one final time to face his wife—who he still loved dearly, but could no longer live with.

"I guess that you can't go home again, Angel." He said again without cruelty and left her there crying and alone.

And in that one moment in time, Dr. Seth Dupree realized, yet again, that all his life it was as if he'd been holding his breath...waiting.

He hoped to mend his broken heart.

He hoped to breathe again.

He hoped.
Epilogue: Another Dying Man

Aerospace Hospice Care; April 2012

Thomas Pepper was dying.

He knew that it was inevitable. He knew that there is no way he could continue to cheat his destiny. So he spends his final days like he does today, seated in his wheelchair with just enough strength in his arms to wheel himself around his room. And it amazes him that a man who was once as big and as strong as a bull just one year ago could be eaten up with disease at such a rapid pace.

Thomas' long awaited book 411 was published last Tuesday and debuted in the number one slot in the New York Times, USA Today and dozens of national and international periodicals.

He smiled at the memory. Pride was one of the many sins that Thomas had prepared himself to answer for during the Judgement. 411 was his finest work. And to his surprise, the critics have been offering up positive review after positive review for his final piece that he would ever write.

He'd been watching the television all morning when he hadn't been watching the children playing. He'd seen a brief caption flash across the bottom of the screen stating that Dr. Angel Hicks Dupree had been proven guilty by a Grand Jury but would not serve jail time for her crimes. Thomas knew that many in his former profession would consider that proclamation as light sentence indeed.

Thomas Pepper knew better.

He knows that the Director of the FBI, Nicholas Sheridan, has bought more than the doctor's silence with his influence on her sentence. He had bought Agent Tabitha Blue and her people valuable time to find the renegade offspring of Pandora known as Pandora Red and bring them to justice before the world learned of their genocidal plans. Even recognition of Joseph Champion's harrowing plot alone may be enough to set the country off on deep, dark journey that it may not be able to pull back from. And when Champion sent him an evidence of what these renegades from Pandora had done: Thomas realized that the poisoning of President Adolphus Sweet and Mayor Ernestine Johnson was just the start of a mass murder of People of Color.

Champion also gambled that the more people knew about what truly happened to these public figures the more likely the world would learn the truth. _That is why I burned the CD that he sent_ _me._ _That's why I read the information thoroughly but didn't use the information in the final edit_ _of my book._ He would take the truth to his coming grave with him.

_And yet what will you do with_ your _truth, Christopher Prince?_

Joseph Champion told one very large lie amidst all of those truths that he'd revealed to the doctor before she killed him that night. He fabricated the idea that he'd sent the new leader of a House in Chains a disk containing the same valuable information that Thomas knew. _Champion played Sheridan—he played all of us for fools even from his grave_. Sheridan came to see Thomas days ago and told him in person that he'd left word with Chris to meet with him soon after the ceremony concluded that had honored the deaths of his fallen family. Chris didn't know the reason why. He couldn't have known otherwise. And yet, once the two men, who were no longer allies, had agreed to meet under adverse circumstances, Sheridan was forced to reveal his secret to his former agent.

On the other end of the deal, Thomas knew that while Angel would not serve any official time she would suffer in anguish for as long as she lived for the decisions that she made during the days before and during the crisis in Atlanta.

And yet, Thomas knew that she would face those days of tribulation alone. His time was now at an end. He could not help her any longer.

He wanted to get to the window and peer out. He'd used most of his advance of 411 and even called in the last favors that he ever would to assure himself this spot with an unobstructed view of the neighborhood preschool's playground below from the hospice center. Thomas loved to watch the children at play. And now, with all of that book business behind him, he could finally spend as many hours of the day as he wished watching them.

He found that he hadn't the strength to push himself forward towards the window. He grew ever irritable. He cursed, but still can't get it done to his liking. He found that he was too far away from his emergency button to call for help.

He heard his door bell chime.

He smiled immediately.

The nurses had access to his room at all times. He knew that the ringing on the bell only served as a courtesy call before they used voice authorization to let themselves in. Perhaps they'd come to change his linens or clean his bathroom as they did daily. He hoped so. Whoever was on the other side of that door could help him get to where he wanted to be. He hoped that they'd dispatched some of the ladies who were closer to his own age. They tended to be kinder to him and show more patience with all of his physical limitations than the younger women did.

He found himself staring at the older nurses sometimes, but not in any sexual manner that he may have just one year earlier. He felt ashamed for the way that he'd treated women before. He felt worse for the manner that he'd treated the sanctity of marriage. _It is another in the long line_ _of issues that I have to answer for_. Thomas minister friend had counseled him and told him that God forgives all sins and the sinners who committed them—even sinners like him. All he had to do was believed in his heart and ask for His forgiveness.

The children would be out soon. He didn't want to miss them. Who knew how long he had left before even this privilege would be denied to him.

He heard a female voice utter her authorization code and then the bolted lock disengaged from the locking mechanism behind him. Thomas looked over his shoulder and saw only one set of legs had joined him in his room this time.

In his mind's eye Thomas sometimes saw Serena Tennyson walk through that door. Sometimes she'd come to kill him. Other times she'd come simply to stay with him and watch him die as he had watched her do so six months earlier.

Thomas knew that it wasn't Serena Tennyson or one of his nurses that had come today.

It was his mother, Julia, who had come to sit with him this day.

He could feel his eyes light up with her entrance and he could see the twinkle in her eyes as well. It was so very different when she showed up at Christmas time. He resisted her. He resented her presence after being out of his life after so many years. They'd argued about the past—about how she'd left Thomas and his siblings to fend for themselves while his father, her husband, lay dying of the same cancer that was eating away at his life force right now. They'd cried together. They'd argued some more. Yet, Thomas knew that his mother was an old woman now. And he knew that she'd come seeking forgiveness for her past sins like he was seeking forgiveness from a higher power for his.

He had neither the strength nor the time to judge anymore.

They'd spent the last few months together getting to know one another again as mother and son. She started taking him out to places where he wanted to go like the grocery store, or to the library, or to the park—or to Christopher Prince's ceremony for his fallen family as he so desired.

If Thomas had any chance of God forgiving his many sins during his last days, how could he decide not to forgive his mother's?

And after all, it felt wonderful to have his mom with him now—even here in the last days of his life.

Julia pushed him to his favorite spot in the entire room, in the entire _world_ that he couldn't have reached without her help. And then she left him alone there with the children and rested her own old legs in front of the TV on the couch on the far side of the room.

Thomas had arrived in his favorite spot just in the nick of time.

He watched the three and four year olds running and jumping about having a big time on a beautiful spring day. The teacher's aides were watchful enough, but became distracted by one of the children who had taken a tumble over by the slide and was crying probably more embarrassment than the effects of an actual injury. The little boy didn't appear to be seriously hurt.

Meanwhile, just out of view of the aides, two older boys seemed to be locked in a disagreement over something or the other. The talking soon turned into shouting and the shouting escalated into shoving and eventually punches being thrown.

One combatant was a little black boy while the other was a petite shaped white child.

The memories of what happened during Scar pushed up from back of his mind to the surface. He nearly stood in his chair sickened so to what he was seeing. He wanted to cry out and bang on the glass for them to stop what they were doing. He begged out loud for them to behave themselves. _Please act civilized. Please don't act like savages towards another_. Thomas was unsure whether he was speaking specifically to the preschool aged boys or to two members of the race in general. One part of his brain did ask the other this question: _Why couldn't one_ _generation learn from the mistakes of those who came before it_? He felt his mother rising behind him as he wondered if this country—this world would ever find enough tolerance in the areas of race relations before it was too late for any of it to matter.

Thomas wondered if discord and conflict between these two races was inevitable whether Tabitha Blue found these renegade Pandora agents before the world learned the truth about Joseph Champion's true intentions or not? He wondered if Christopher Prince's anointed rising as the One would prevent future conflicts like the ones suffered by so many last year or ignite more of them? The last question was one of the final points that he'd put to the many millions of readers that he knew would view the pages of his final work.

Thankfully, the disagreement between the young boys had ended as quickly as it had come. The two children were back laughing and playing in no time. Whatever had brought on the fury had settled itself even without the aid of grownup supervision or interference.

Thomas Pepper sat himself back in his wheelchair and smiled.

And that smile didn't fade when the tears of joy flowed down his flushed cheeks.

Perhaps there is hope for peace in our time—in the time of those he would leave behind when I'm dead and gone.

Julia must have seen the tears on his face and wrapped her arms around her boy and comforted him the best she could. Thomas squeezed his mother's wrist with affection, but never took his eyes off of the children of all races playing below.

He watched the two boys for a few minutes more.

Perhaps in that miniature block of time and space the two of them had discovered the truth that so many of us had failed to grasp if not completely understand. Thomas hoped that someday soon—before it was too late—that they would be gracious enough to share it with _him_ in the little time he had left.

He would gladly spend the last of his energy—the last of his life's blood to pass the knowledge and wisdom to a country and world that so very badly needed it.

After all, wherever Thomas Pepper went, the truth was never far behind.

End of Novel

Thank you for downloading this e-book.
Dedication

As I've said before, this one is for...well, for me. This tale has been in my pipeline for a long time.
Nest Egg Publishing Note:

This was a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are use factiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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