I'm really sorry for missing an update! I sort of...well, my husband's job sent us out to Colorado, and on the way there both our cars more or less blew up and we got stranded in Utah, and since his job was only paying him 13/hr anyways which wasn't enough-as you know from my whole 'Publishing Wendy so I can buy food' thing last week, my husband quit his job and we are not living in my grandma's basement. :D Yay?

Oh, but he has a new job, one that pays him 16/hr instead, so maybe we'll actually be able to make it on our own now and I won't have to beg my fanfic readers to buy $2 books?

Btw, if you have gotten Wendy, pretty, pretty please leave a review. ^.^PLEEEEEEASE.

...*sigh* freaking Honda Civic...

10

"Where's my mom? What have you done with her?"

The bespeckled man sitting on the other side of the window sighed. Kai didn't like the look of him. He wore a black polo shirt, the kind one would go golfing in, though his ID tag on his pocket tooted him as both a 'doctor' of something and a marshal. The armed American soldiers lining the wall behind them helped a lot in taking him seriously.

"Peace, Mr. Tate, we've done nothing to your mother. She's just as we found her in Los Angelos. Once we're done here we'll send you on your way to her. Not even the US army could keep a mother from her child."

Kai had to fight down a dark laugh at that. Armies did that every day, regardless of that stupid "No Arms" world peace treaty, which all these soldiers were currently grinding into the dirt.

"Now, if you boys—and young lady," he bowed his head to the taut Ayah hidden in a ring of protective boys. "Will promise to keep the peace and not hurt any of these fine men, not only will you all make it to California just as you planned, but these boys will get to see their mothers too. We don't wish anyone any harm. We only want to learn."

"Then why couldn't my mom do it? How did you even know about us?"

"America has its ways." He lifted a hand to smooth his upper lip, as though a mustache had once been there. "You can't expect me to confide a country's security secrets to you, right? Really boys, you don't have to," he waved the hand at them. "We're not going to hurt her. Most we'll do is take a blood sample, that's all. You can't blame us for wanting to learn about you first, can you? You were about to board illegally on our shores."

"We have passports!" said Max.

"Had," said the man, and suspicion crawled across Kai's skin. "Now, if you'll space out and show us you mean no harm, we can get this over and done with. For testing's sake, we're going to have to separate you—"

"No," said Kai, speaking for the first time since they had accosted them on the beach.

"—but only for a short time," the older man finished with that same air of a tired adult being patient with children throwing tantrums. Kai knew that tone well. He'd had to live as a teenager among adults who'd never had to draw blood in their lives.

Kai flexed his hands. The bottled up fire was starting to give him something very like heartburn, and no matter how many times he gulped, it wouldn't go down. He glanced around, trying to find some reassurance in the stance of the soldiers.

"Well, excuse us if we don't jump to help," he said as he did so. "We just wiggled out of a situation not unlike this one, and it didn't turn out too pleasant." Best not to mention the guns.

"We are aware of your abduction from the freighter. We assure you that we had nothing to do with that and are looking into the situation even as we speak. Now, if we could see the girl first."

They all tightened reflexively around her—or rather, Max and Kai did and Tyson followed along, not having the best skills in English. He just trusted Max and Kai to get enough to know what to do.

"She doesn't go alone," said Max.

The man gave a barely restrained sigh. "Very well. Mr. Hiwatari, you may accompany her. Just please keep your fire to yourself. None of us here want to avoid violence as much as we do."

A soldier went to open the only door in the dark gray, cinder block cell and waited. They all hesitated, and Ayah turned questioning, shivering blue eyes to Kai.

"You and me are going," he told her calmly in Japanese.

"Whoa, hang on, where are you going?" Tyson all but squeaked.

"Max will explain." Kai took a step forward. "You two try to stick together."

"Wait, should we have a plan or something? Kai, man, what if you don't come back?"

Kai was already to the door, his hand wrapped tightly around Ayah's. The heartburn rose to its highest pitch as he came within inches of a soldier. The hall outside had bleaching, white lights and windowless walls, strongly reminding Kai of Cain's bunker. That thought wasn't reassuring in the least.

"We'll figure it out," he heard Max say.

"But if we're all separated—"

The door closed behind them with a well-oiled, heavy click.

Ayah pulled in closer. There were armed men out here too, dressed in the same dark, bulky uniform and with something automatic and deadly in hand.

Moment's later, the Marshal Scientist came out from the other door, one hand in the pocket of his white slacks. He rubbed his upper lip again as though to smooth a mustache. More men followed with him; a personal guard.

"Thank you. This way, if you would."

Not like they had much choice. The soldiers penned them into a box that moved after the marshal like a wagon. More white, featureless halls went by them, and a passing thought made him wonder what the difference was between these windowless halls and the floors of the freight below the water level. If he closed his eyes, could he hear the creak of metal?

He could feel his heartbeat in the fingers clamped in Ayah's grip. She lifted up on tippy toes and gripped his shoulder with her other hand. Her whisper came to him as clear and quiet as only the denizen of sound could do.

"He's lying."

Well. There went that hope, meager as it was.

He leaned his head as close as he could, not caring if the men around saw them. He spoke so quietly that not even he could hear it, but he only hoped it was clear enough for her.

"Any truth?"

"Hard to say. I think he feels pretty justified with his lies. He did waver a bit on Max's Mom, though. Either that was the biggest lie of them all, or something happened with her that helps him feel that justification."

Kai couldn't help but feel a little impressed that she was able to whisper that all to him, still just as clearly, quietly, and also at high speed, and he was able to get all of it. He would trade fire breathing for that if he actually cared to talk to people, quietly or loudly.

Hearing someone lie, on the other hand…wait, had he lied recently? Did he know it? Or did his general anxiety cover that?

Not important. Kai schooled his thoughts back into focus. A part of him said he should have thought of the possibility of the US government getting involved, but that was only if they heard about them. Apparently, despite Tala's attempts to keep important facts out of easily accessible lines, Max's mother had not. And if the state of Japan's and Russia's (and now obviously the US's) breaking of the global pact.

Which brought another key fact to him. The doctor had yet to point out their obviously illegal use of weaponry. Perhaps he thought it too obvious to talk about, like the elephant in the room. Or perhaps he had been so focused on peeling Ayah apart from the others—instantly, Kai scrambled through what he could recall of his conversation with Max or his mother. Had he mentioned Ayah's use of sound as the catalyst? Had his mother? Hell, there was no way to know!

Meaning it was best to assume that the man did.

As they came to a narrow security door made of metal and armed with a sensor that made the one back in the mansion of Ayah's captors look like something out of a cereal box, Kai leaned in close to Ayah.

"What can you hear about this place?"

She closed her eyes. For a moment, he worried the obnoxious beeping of the doctor going through various clearances on the pad would cover anything up. It wasn't till they had passed through and to yet another short hallway that she tilted her head up to him and tucked it against his ear.

"Thick stone blocks a lot. It stops most vibrations, but I can hear a steady rumble. It could be anything, but it might be whatever is powering this station."

Power. How did this place get its power? Was that even important?

And then the doctor opened the second door, and Kai realized that wasn't a question anymore.

On the other side was the scientist's lab to end all scientist's labs. Having been in a fair share of them growing up, he recognized enough to shudder. This couldn't just be any bunker. They couldn't have just washed up on any bunker with this kind of technology. They had to be expecting them. They had to have something to do with…this couldn't be…

Even as he took in the screens, the wide discs of surgeon's lights on metal arms, holographic displays, metal exam tables complete with metal belts, glass boxes with white rubber arms, the distant lights, he felt whatever calm collect he had left flee.

Ayah stopped abruptly, jerking back from him. "Kai, what's…?"

The more he saw, the more he could feel each heartbeat spiking higher and higher until he feared it would simply stop. A modern, sleek display of tools he didn't want to know the purpose of, an empty white tiled room in the back separated by a thick glass wall, arms upon arms of bent metal, folded to machines and lights and platforms and tables. Two sets of double doors he knew the thickness of just by the way they swung on their hinges. So much stone that not even Ayah had been able to hear this much power, hear the ocean, hear…hear…

Her lips were moving. She had let go of his hand. He couldn't hear her anymore. The heartburn in his chest had spilled out into his blood and flesh, filling him to the tips of his fingers and toes. His wings rose up, and he couldn't have drawn them back in even if he wanted to.

For a space of time that he could have never guessed, he seemed to hang there, lava to the surface of his skin, memories and alarms zooming past too fast to catch, but enough to pound the nail of dread ever deeper into his chest.

And then he burned. Fire consumed him, and once more he was up in the catwalks above the stadium, caught in Dranzer's firestorm without a clue of why it had started.

And that's the end! Stay tuned next week for the sequel, "Before Beasts, There Was Lightning." ^.^ Oh, and as always, please let me know what you think and leave a review! Lovey dovey love love.