Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. Don't own reference the video games Space Invaders, Berzerk, Defender or Bega's Battle.

Author's Note: Millions of thanks to my readers and reviewers! You're all very awesome! :) Thank you for your feedback, encouragement and patience! Hope you enjoy this chapter! :D

Again, there are references in this chapter to my previous story, "Ask For Another Day", but reading that story is not required to understand the references made.

Reviews, constructive criticism, and feedback are welcomed and appreciated! Thanks and enjoy!

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Chapter Twelve: Your Words Are Weapons Of The Mind

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# # #

How much time had passed? Juliet hadn't counted time properly in days, hadn't seen the sun or the moon to judge even the time of day. Now she was standing on the spot where light had been such a short time ago. Or was it a long time ago? Was it the fault of distance, or human fault alone, to race back here, out of breath, and find this space deserted?

What kind of fate had given her sight to intuit the correct path to chase Yang down, to find Juliet to act bravely—or stupidly—to rescue a civilian from a killer's grasp, yet had robbed her cruelly at the crucial moment to get back to another who also needed her?

Juliet felt a crushing weight, those of hours or days, the injuries she bore, the blood, dried and fresh, that she wore, the stale pain, wrapping itself around her neck.

They didn't look at each other; Shawn was just as dumbfounded of what he was not seeing here as was Juliet. Of all the things that had happened today, this felt like it made the least sense. It was, he thought, supposed to be over. He ignored though, in the "over scenario", that it was over because Yang had taken him away instead.

"Two slow," Shawn hissed, looking over the empty place. His face felt numb. "Was that . . . what she meant? Twice, I would miss—" Miss what? A few crucial details that could have prevented him from losing the game to Yang again?

With a lump in her throat making it had to take in or expel anything but the most shallow of breaths, Juliet stared at the scene, standing in the groove where Shawn when he approached on foot. When she had been chained to the fence herself, it had been nearly impossible to imagine the horror what he had been looking at, only because she had had her own horror show with which to deal. She couldn't, not even for a few seconds, convince herself that Yang wouldn't slit her throat on a whim. And from her position she hadn't even been able to crane her neck to see her partner. . . .

Her partner was gone. Just the way Yang had been gone from behind the wheel. And Lightly . . . he'd been right over there, lying dazed or unconscious on the ground. Juliet swallowed the lump with difficultly. She hadn't checked Lightly over, made certain he was out cold. She hadn't checked him for weapons.

Shawn was still muttering but Juliet wasn't hearing his words. She had thought . . . this was an end of a different kind. The end of the ordeal; the three of them were going to walk away, today.

Still bound, Shawn scanned the area again, Yang's riddles cutting into him. He replayed at all of them, one after the other as he looked for that anything he might have missed. What the hell was she playing at? What good was Lassiter to her now without Juliet? Last time around, Yang had abandoned claim to the waitress she'd taken when he and Gus and the SBPD figured out the clues to her location. Then Yang had gone after a new target, his mother.

Shawn frowned, not understanding Yang's plan. Lassiter could only be dead weight to her now; why not leave him and go after a new target? Though he didn't want to entertain even false thoughts of Gus or his father becoming Yang's new target, Shawn forced himself through it. A new scary thought occurred to him; maybe he didn't know Yang as well as he thought, maybe she wasn't a one-trick pony.

Juliet hadn't heard Lassiter yell, though she combed her memory frantically for sounds she might have missed. Maybe there wasn't time for him to yell. Juliet looked up at the fence they'd been chained too, gasping when her eyes caught the abandoned cuffs. Her mind worked fast, creating a scenario she couldn't quite believe in.

Maybe . . . Lassiter had gone in pursuit of Lightly, or of Yang, and he was still giving chase, in spite of having no gun, no forms of communication or idea, in spite of being weakened from the various injuries he'd sustained since being first attacked, in spite of being bound and given nothing of substance, given only a few drops of water . . .

But now he was unbound . . . unbound, and he couldn't have done it himself.

Juliet pulled her arms against her own body as if in an attempt to hold her organs within. Something was threatening to spill from her when she knew, distantly, that she couldn't let it.

But she had wanted it for days, wanted it more so than freedom and safety, she wanted to release the taloned creature trapped behind her ribs. As a hopelessness she hadn't imagined possible cut into her sharp enough to maim but not to kill, Juliet's jaw opened and her tongue helped to welcome the scream her throat had kept within since the first ambush had left them both helpless.

Her cry was for Lassiter as much as for herself, ringing out across the stones marking thousands of resting places. If it were any other day but this one, she could have simply been just another mourner, not able to understand a death, not able to let go.

Shawn, jarred by Juliet's cry, felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise. What did the two of them think they were doing, standing here agape? Ruefully, Shawn wondered if Yang could see them now, if she were laughing over their confusion and shock. He gritted his teeth.

"Jules, my phone," Shawn called to her, reaching for it with his still bound hands. He pushed it out of his belt and heard it land with a muted thud on the darkened grass.

Juliet scrambled, pressing the back of her hand to her lips. She got the phone in her hands and dialed, hoping the first number would suffice. Gus's voice blared at her angrily, thinking she was someone else. "Gus, Gus, he's right here!" Juliet heard his surprise as she pushed the phone towards Shawn's ear. "He wants to know where you are."

Before Shawn could speak more the necessary words, he heard Vick's tight voice. "Put Detective O'Hara on, Mr. Spencer!"

Shawn nodded to her. "Chief wants to talk to you."

# # #

He awoke briefly to darkness, cramped, muffled, stuffy and dank. Trunk, he mused distantly as the surface he lay upon rocked beneath him. Trunk was less mind-blowing than coffin, he decided, pressing his lips together hard enough to feel them go white. His body was tied up in knots under the skin; his head ached too much to have the drive to stay awake. Unsettling hallucinations woke him briefly again a few minutes later. He smelled exhaust and diesel; something was much worse and wrong beyond these little factors, but he could only grasp at the reason why. Nevertheless, Carlton closed his eyes against the darkness, drifting back to a much uneasier sleep.

# # #

About her, what it was exactly, Mary didn't have the right words. He was of highly brilliant, reasoning mind; before all this business of switching sides, he had earned a reputation of being accredited, counted on to be shrewd in his analyzations, though he'd considered himself a weak personality. Easily vulnerable, waiting for the perfect cult, the one source to draw him in, take him over. Completely. He had nothing to anchor him to a life outside of obsessive profiling when he began the quest thirteen years and six months ago to find her.

She was . . . exciting. Terrifying. She was very good at what she did, and seemed to enjoy it to the fullest. Maybe it was a flicker of conscience, but Yang still scared the daylights out of him. In the dimly lit evening, Mary felt himself smiling. All serial murderers—those with specific patterns—were scary and bordering on, or were completely, soulless, inhuman, thriving on control of lesser beings—beings like himself. But most of them were male, and most of them weren't as smart as Yang—or shrewd. Mary liked to have a few characteristics in common with her, even if this included killing without remorse.

In spite of her nature and behavior, he did her bidding willingly, and didn't mind if he was, somehow, under her control. There were worse things. Behind the wheel of their latest stolen vehicle, his face alone was exposed to the world, while she sat in back, slumped down her the windows. He'd recommended it.

He'd also suggested a backup plan, and that's how they'd come to have a spare vehicle just outside the back gates, behind the area of the cemetery under construction. Certainly, dragging Lassiter through and around the tall mounds of soft, uprooted dirt with Yang hobbling and panting along at his heels was an experience he could have done without. Mary lost track of how many times he had stumbled and almost sent the three of them down into the probably occupied mass graves on a wild avalanche of earth.

They still had another place to go where they could slip in unseen, unknown, though they were both fugitives. But Mary considered Chief Vick's position; perhaps she'd thought alerting the public meant alarming them too much, which could hinder the investigation and search. Search and rescue. Half-failed rescue. Mary could have smiled bitterly at their missed opportunity; the pair of killers—he liked the sound of it—they were had almost been rid of both detectives, but he frowned instead. It was too much of a tease: They had almost been rid of both detectives.

Seething, he turned his thoughts elsewhere. He had to wonder who—if anyone—would survive this game. Yang had specific plans; this time, not leaving much to chance, much based on what Shawn Spencer could or couldn't do. Mary pursed his lips. The part of the game he liked least involved Shawn Spencer—which should have told him he should not be playing. These were Shawn's coworkers—friends—just as it had been his mother six months before. Yang wanted to make it personal for Shawn. Never before had she been so personal with her targets—nor the victims she chose for the targets to save—but Shawn had proven to be special. For the first time in thirteen years, the victims taken remained alive, because, on her terms, Shawn had been her best player. The champ.

Still, Mary kept his hopes. He knew more about Yang than Shawn Spencer could ever care to know. All he had to do now was give Yang some time. He imagined her trying on her given first name for him, modeling her figure in a mirror, winking at him before spinning to lock her arms around his throat, pull him into what would be for her a gentle embrace. He couldn't wait—no. Mary could wait. He had been at this thirteen and a half years, after all.

# # #

In spite of the familiar buzz of organized police activity—the strange collision of noise and final resting places, Chief Vick remained silent, frozen to the spot for just a few precious seconds, her eyes sweeping the scene. It seemed impossible at first, this—next—disappearing act; how could three people—two of very short stature, in comparison to her Head Detective—just vanish into thin air?

Karen swallowed hard. Just as before, she tasted anger and violence and fear, its bitter cocktail burning all the way down. Liquid-dangerous, sharp as tears.

Twilight set upon them, but they were granted at least another hour of muted light, due to the summer season. The SBPD were to use this time wisely, or she would have their badges.

She didn't have the time right now to properly reprimand Shawn Spencer, who immediately owned up to working alone—and by display of the disappointed, sickly, and sad faces of Henry's, Gus', and Marks', respectively, she could believe it was true. Nor did she have the time—nor was it the place—to experience the relief of retrieving one of her detectives and the feckless psychic, the latter completely unharmed.

Juliet, charged up, had immediately refused a trip to the hospital. Her knees jittered as she sat on the edge of the ambulance, but not out of fear. She'd been restless, unfocused almost on the scene before her, and ordered the EMTs to hurry because she had a job to do. She didn't want them shining light in her eyes or asking her questions about the burns on the back of her neck.

"You don't get it," she'd shot back, exasperated, after one EMT asked for patience. "I need to get back to work." Her eyes had filled with tears then but Juliet refused to break. Lassiter needed her to stay strong; if she was in little pieces, a mess, she wasn't going to be able to help him. She swallowed her doubts, one quick shot.

Shawn, by far, was in much worse shape, emotionally. He was possibly, secretly, on level with Vick—though she'd never tell. He too was scanning the entire area as if there was something he could have missed—a trapdoor, a hidden path, any sort of easy camouflage—right under his nose. He was, however, bound and sitting in the backseat of Yang's car when Lightly might have been making his move.

"Chief, this is what we've got to do," Juliet began, breathing hard when she saw Vick start to protest. "Please, Chief, don't order me not to do it. I don't want to go home." She dropped her voice. "I already followed one order by a superior officer—and look where we are now." The two women stared at each other.

"Detective," Vick interceded firmly, "it's not your fault."

Juliet shook her head as if she didn't quite believe it. "Regardless, I've got to find him." Then she launched into what they should be doing, setting up perimeters, searching the entire cemetery, searching the surrounding areas—all actions Vick had already taken directly after their distress call.

"Detective—" Vick tried again, intent on reminding O'Hara of her own escape from Yang a short time ago with hope that O'Hara would want to take a few steps back, emotionally. It would be too harsh—and likely impossible—to pull her away from the case, calling it a conflict of interest, but Vick wanted everyone on point and focused, not about to crack under pressure. And since O'Hara had just been under considerable pressure, being a hostage herself, Vick knew her doubts were warranted. However, O'Hara cut her off before she could voice any of it.

"I said I would come back, Chief!" Juliet snapped, her eyes pinched. "And when I came back—"

She started talking about the empty handcuffs, started talking about how she knew Lassiter was no good at waiting but how he trusted her, talking faster to the point of nearly babbling as she ran through a list of Lassiter's good qualities and noted, just as quickly, how some of those qualities weren't as seen as positives to others, but that she appreciated them for what they were, and for him for what he was. "What he is," Juliet amended quickly, pausing to draw in breath for another round of speech.

Vick hopped her chance to get through to Juliet, seizing her firmly by the shoulder. "Detective, you will be the biggest help if you let the paramedics give you the once over—and it's an order," Vick added, raising her eyebrows sternly. "I want to know you're in top shape to continue this investigation—because I want to reissue you your firearm as soon as possible."

Juliet nodded, pressing her lips together. The activity around her became a dull rushing of sound, as if she were on subway car traveling fast under a large body of water. Eventually, after catching flickers of them, she picked out two people she didn't immediately know at first sight. But after giving them each a good once-over, she formed lists of vague details about them, and wondered why they were here—and how long they had been involved in this investigation.

The thin red-haired woman she recognized as Detective Alexander; from the way the Chief was addressing her, it looked like she might have been assigned as lead detective. Juliet had only met Detective Alexander once or twice before; they had never worked together. She remembered her as a stiff person with tight skin and rare smiles. Actually, her manner reminded Juliet a lot of the way Lassiter had behaved towards her when they had been first assigned as partners; fortunately for her, Lassiter had eventually loosened up, somewhat.

Frowning, Juliet looked away. She was still listening to the EMTs with half an ear, answering with mostly the yes or the no required of her, when required. Her eyes found the other person, a man, standing with Henry Spencer. At first it was difficult to tell who was comforting whom, but as she watched, Juliet remembered the man, remembered the surprise in his eyes when she'd pulled her gun on him, remembered the amused endearment in how he addressed her partner. How he'd feigned hurt at being forgotten, but had resolved to cut Lassiter slack considering he was lying in a hospital bed after nearly drowning.

"Adam Marks is here?" she whispered, drawing the attention of the two EMTs. Realizing what she'd said, Juliet shook her head for them. "Nothing, nothing."

"Shawn, how could you?" Gus asked quietly, standing at Shawn's side, leaning in. He seemed afraid that Shawn might try to run away.

Shawn glanced briefly at Gus before continuing his scanning. His hands, now unbound, were pressed to his temples. Shawn couldn't get out of his head that all the clues or signs were here and he'd just missed something vital. He hadn't even chosen one of the detectives outright and still he'd fumbled. "I had to, Gus," he answered low enough for only the two of them to hear.

"You should have let me come here with you."

Shawn discreetly shook his head no. "You would have tried to stop me. That's why I didn't tell you—you might have convinced me." His voice quivered and he paused for a moment.

"So you were just going to go with her?" Gus sounded disgusted, and a bit scared.

Shawn's breath caught. He was suddenly trapped in Yang's backseat, forced to keep his eyes level with the rearview mirror. Her eyes were locked on that mirror, and she'd looked happy. Victorious. Gus' words struck him hard, because up until this moment he hadn't really considered what was going to happen once the car started moving, once they had really driven away. He shuddered.

"I just thought . . . I thought . . . they'd be safe. If I just gave her what she wanted—"

"Shawn!" Gus hissed, perturbed. "How do you know what she really wants? You might think she wants you—but what do you think she wants from you?"

Shawn kept quiet. He was thinking again about how he'd gone to the cemetery to face Yang and get her, somehow, to release the captive detectives, how he'd considered that Yang might want his death as her ultimate prize but considered also that Yang was just infatuated with him and just wanted some sick version of a romance—maybe with a suicide pact—and how Juliet had ended up saving his life by risking her own. It was a strange turn of events he never would have imagined.

"Are you listening to me?" Gus demanded, shaking Shawn out of his thoughts. "She enlisted Mary Lightly's help to escape from prison—and then she went after SBPD detectives—and what did she do all of that for?" He raised his eyebrows for emphasis as Shawn shrugged dumbly. "To hurt you, Shawn! To make you suffer! To make you squirm!"

"How do you know that for sure?"

Gus sighed loudly. "How do you not?" He balled his fists. "We have no idea who she is—who she really is—and we have a skewed view of her because of Lightly."

"I don't think so, I mean, I think we can still go on what he had said—"

Gus gave Shawn a sideways look. "Really? You still want to trust Mary even though he's in on it?"

Shawn swallowed. "Well, no, not exactly, but maybe he's . . . under her spell or something."

"Listen to me, Shawn," Gus said slowly. "He killed those prison guards, the ones who had been driving Yang's transport. And he plotted with Yang to do it. And then he helped her ambush and kidnap Juliet and Lassiter. You can't possibly think that he's a victim."

Shawn still looked skeptical, but he also looked sick, as if he'd been holding a secret hope that they'd had an "ally" on the inside, one ready to turn the tables on Yang at the key moment.

"Shawn, if that were true—why didn't he just run when Yang left him to spirit you off to God knows where?" Gus broke off and mumbled a quick prayer, as if he needed to remind himself that Yang hadn't spirited Shawn off to God knows where. "I mean, he was basically free! Their hostages were still chained to a fence, so it wasn't like they were going to follow him, find him—"

"But Jules—" Shawn broke in.

"Sure, after Juliet got free, maybe he was spooked," Gus allotted, not believing a single word. "But come on, Shawn, he still had the chance to leave. He could have gone to the cops and turned himself in, explained his side of the story—no matter how ludicrous—and maybe have been offered some kind of plea deal. Because let's face it, Yang is a hot commodity—and her recapture is top priority."

Shawn listened, somewhat unwillingly, as Gus made more and more sense. Why would . . . why would Mary have been interested in subduing Lassiter and dragging him away if there hadn't been some kind of plan to meet up with Yang later? He let out a long sigh, taking in more tension the more air he released. He replayed the scene, as he and Juliet had come upon it, every stark detail standing out in the emptiness of life. He didn't even remember hearing an engine start, and wondered now if Mary hadn't been behind it, pushing the car while it sat quietly in neutral. Pushing it to the edge, as close to a road—an escape route—as he could get. Then, gone.

Abruptly, Shawn sat down, not even privy to the milliseconds when his own mind had registered a weakness in his knees. This really wasn't over Mary, or Mary's supposed distrustfulness; it was that all the things that Shawn thought he'd known were untrue. He'd thought, for instance, that he'd been able to figure out Yang, understand why she'd chosen such a "game" with its wild, offbeat "rules", twists and turns, what was really up for grabs when she'd asked him to pick one or lose both, what she did really want, now and when all of this was over. But Gus was right—Shawn hadn't the slightest idea her intentions, with or without him in her clutches. He'd thought he'd be able to end this whole scary mess today—that maybe Yang would surrender, turning over all her good cards because she wanted Shawn to like her.

He was sitting level with some headstones now, and some were close enough to read but he was having a hard time focusing on the names. Juliet is safe, a little voice reminded him. But he still hadn't won the game. Even though it felt as if he'd had. Shawn stared at the headstones, guiltily. A small part of him had desired this outcome—choosing Juliet, so obvious, since the day they'd first met, he'd always wanted to choose her.

Slowly, Shawn began to flash through his memories of all their encounters, how she always arrived on scene like sunshine (packing heat), how she always had a genuine smile for everyone around her.

It's as if we've already met. As if we'd already known each other, long before.

She . . . hadn't given up on Lassiter in that first year, even though she perturbed him—challenged him by being an optimistic opposite—even though he made her, too often, unhappy.

And now . . . Juliet had chosen Shawn over loyalty to her partner, chasing after his captor, unarmed, ready to stop at nothing. Shawn stared at the words carved in the stone in his line of vision.

He could make out whirring sounds of voices above him, directed at him, but underneath that were the more important noises of those dedicated to the search. But just like at the hotel, Shawn felt it was all for nothing—Yang long gone. Maybe not long gone; they'd had, at best, a few freewheeling minutes in which to scrape together something new.

Enough time while Juliet scrambled to form a plan and act, and wrangle him out Yang's car. He really didn't like to see Yang behind the wheel, Shawn decided.

He'd seen them, all four of them—they'd been right in front of his face. "They were right there, Gus," Shawn mumbled aloud, not knowing he was doing so. "I had them. And then there was one."

# # #

"Shawn, please stand up." A quiet plead, a generic voice, dulled by exasperation or numbness. He wasn't certain which one of them it had come from—could be anyone. He didn't dare look up. Here, he was eye level with the graves—sick all of a sudden that they could have just buried him, and took off for fresh blood. He'd lost.

Shawn flinched when a hand touched his shoulder. It could be anyone touching him, it could be Yang, never left, back for more.

What if he looked up, and it was her? Had he really even gotten out of that car?

This . . . was the final resting place. Shawn worked to stifle a shiver, forced himself to picture Yang with her black and white mores, dark hair by light skin—the perverted version of Snow White offering him the apple instead. Or was it breadcrumbs? Shawn clenched a fist, trying not to get riled up; she was here. She could have left her ghost behind to spy on him.

"Shawn, you look so nice in red today."

She could see him. Shawn pressed his lips together, hard. That . . . nothing mattered besides getting himself to Jules. And Lassie. They were both here, waiting. Waiting for him to screw up their lives, and deaths.

And Yang. She was waiting too. Waiting with a grin—and a serious promise for fatal harm. He made himself keep on. "Shawn, you came!" Yang called out with child-like glee.

Shawn uprighted himself as if he were in a sudden trance, inadvertently throwing off Gus and Henry, who had had their hands on his shoulders. He strode to the spot where he'd first stopped, when he could see it all too well. As if it were the past, he called up the images and his own reaction to them—the grotesque tableau which Yang had set up for him.

Yes, it must have been her idea and not Mary's; there was never a word minced from Yang, and her clues led to elaborate artistic visions started with a cryptic note dropped off at the police station—the boardwalk, the drive-in theater—where there usually would be hundreds of witnesses—or, if something went wrong (or right), hundreds of victims.

So why had she chosen this place, with its already dead audience, and given him a sight for his eyes only? Was it because it was too sick a vision to share with anyone else? It was, Shawn thought, a perfect representation of what Yang had asked of him—both detectives threatened with certain death, or just one, if he failed to choose right. Saving both would have been impossible—both Lightly and Yang had it in them to kill.

Shawn replayed the words they'd exchanged; maybe it wasn't what he had seen or wasn't seeing but what he had—or hadn't—heard.

Yang had talked about death, about loving him and possibly worshipping him. She had teased or taunted him about his slowness of figuring out her riddles, and then she'd complemented him for being such a good opponent.

Shawn had cut her off with the reminder that he was not the Yin to her crazy and that he didn't like death and that they weren't alike, but she'd countered him. He did like death, she'd said, and demanded he cut her slack because he couldn't possibly know from only meeting her once that they weren't cut from the same cloth. But somehow, she "knew" it.

And then she got personal, making him talk about that night they had met. And then when he'd gotten "personal" with her, she'd denied him.

And then she asked him to "roll the dice" and make that final life and death decision.

And he had chosen himself.

All of this, minus unnecessary details and minor nuances, he'd told to Gus, his father, Marks, Vick, and that cold fish Detective Alexander, though painting the picture of the horrific setting he'd seen he considered lost on them. Only Gus had reacted while the rest had remained professional, listening attentively as if this were a story about someone else.

Juliet had not been present, as she had been at an ambulance, getting her neck, cheek and fingers bandaged, but Shawn guessed he would have to repeat the thing many times, and she was bound to be there for at least one of them.

It was getting dark, Shawn realized with an internal shiver. Nothing useful had been discovered yet, neither from him or from the entire squad combing the cemetery. He didn't want to face Gus or his father, but on his own he was only coming up with nothing, and nothing was useless.

They had found out about what he did from Juliet via his cell phone; Shawn had winced, miserable, but Juliet had shown him no mercy. Or perhaps it the blind worry over Lassiter's fate that made her keep talking. He had expected at least a reprimand from Vick, but both she and Marks stared at him with angry disappointment, as if he had betrayed them somehow. His father's reaction was most curious; at first, Henry looked pissed off and actually balled a fist as if to hit Shawn in the face.

But his anger had dissolved as he rushed forward and grabbed Shawn in a bone crushing hug. "What are you trying to do?" he hissed in Shawn's ear. "Give me a goddamned heart attack?"

"I wasn't trying," Shawn said in a shocked gasp. "Can you let me go? This is embarrassing."

Henry shot him an incredulous look as he let go. "You know better than to pull a stunt like that, kid. Where the hell were your brains?"

Shawn shrugged and was fortunate enough to have Gus show up and pull him off to the side. "That's what I'd like to know too, Shawn." He had been staring into Shawn's eyes as if he expected his friend vanish, like "poof!", right in front of him. And so began Gus's rigorous questioning and Shawn's bewildered answers; if it were anyone else, Shawn would have lied through his teeth. But as it was, Gus was the only one who asked.

Now, Shawn saw both his father and Gus standing behind him. They must have been watching him like a hawk as he stood in the past, replaying the conversations and not knowing the light was going dark.

As he opened his mouth to say something—hopefully an ice breaker—Shawn's phone rang. Freezing to the spot, he fumbled for it, and saw that his screen reported the caller to be unknown. Shawn raised his arm and waved it to get attention; he guessed he knew who it would be before he answered the phone.

"Incoming call, here!" he called out. "I'm sensing it could be Yang!"

He got his attention; quickly, Vick, Marks, and Juliet had joined Henry and Gus in a semi-circle around him. Some uniforms, including Buzz McNab, walked up behind them.

"Answer it, Mr. Spencer," Vick told him. "Put it on speaker."

Shawn nodded and did as she instructed. "Hello?"

Without preamble, and sounding like she was pouting, Yang said, "I'm going to kill him, Shawn." She sighed. "You've obviously made your choice."

Juliet pressed her hands against her mouth.

"No!" Shawn almost shouted. "I chose—me. Remember? You were there."

"I was, and I almost got away with it." She sounded too smug for Shawn's liking.

"But you said you wanted me. You can't have it both ways," he challenged her.

Yang laughed. "I think I can, if I want it so."

"I'm confused," Shawn said, ignoring the looks of the posse around him trying to catch his eye. It was hard; each one had a look they wanted to share with him. "You don't want me? You don't want me to like you?"

Shawn listened hard for her breathing; Yang hadn't spoken in more than a few seconds. It felt like an eternity. "Listen," he said, "why not tell me where you so I can come to you. Just me."

Shawn flinched at Vick snapping her fingers. He looked up, almost dropping the phone in the process, when he saw how intensely she looked back. She mouthed, "Don't you dare," and he mouthed back, "Location" with half a shrug. Vick's eyes were burning him. He had a feeling that she might slap him once the call was done; latent anger over his dumber than dumb actions.

"Yang?" Shawn asked tentatively, praying she was still there. He stole a glance at Juliet and wished immediately he could ask for proof of life; Juliet was as still as a tombstone, her hands still against her mouth as if she might cry out forcefully as she had done earlier.

"Shawnie," Yang began in a breathy, wispy voice, "you know what's happened here?" Her blunt delight in his ear made Shawn's skin go cold, but he was relieved she was still on the line. "This . . . you know those arcade games you loved as a kid? The ones you had to pay to play, a couple quarters of hard earned allowance money for a few games of Space Invaders, Berzerk, Defender or Bega's Battle?"

Shawn's heart skipped beats when she mentioned these games; they had truthfully been among his top 10 afternoon wasters. Goose bumps raised on his arms as he fought away a sudden image of Yang looking over his shoulder as he'd played, oblivious to anything but what was on-screen.

Shawn's mouth was dry, but he forced out words to let her know he was still there, a common courtesy, he sneered to himself. "Yeah, sure."

Yang's voice was sickly sweet. "Of course you do, Shawn. I bet you were pretty good, or wanted to be pretty good, so you played—and paid—every chance you got."

She paused again, but Shawn had no time to collect his spiraling thoughts. He heard her smacking her lips. "But sometimes, when you were really good, I bet you got free games, or extra lives, so you could keep playing without having to feed that arcade slot. Well, Shawnie, last time you played my game, you certainly rose to every challenge, you saved all the lives I put in jeopardy, and you defeated me before I could blow anyone up. You were my most admirable foe."

Her casual tone made Shawn feel dizzy. The coldness had spread to his insides. Still holding the phone to his ear, he reached for Gus's arm to steady himself. Gus clamped his hand on to Shawn's arm for extra stability.

When she giggled, he almost jumped a mile, causing both himself and Gus to stagger for balance. "Well, Shawn, because of that, because of when we last met and played together, I'm going to make you an offer. One time only. All of what's happened and been done up until this moment has been your free play. Starting now, the real game begins."

What she didn't say was that someone was going to have to pay, but the message was clear enough. "My—my free play?" Shawn repeated. He flinched when Yang laughed loudly.

"Game on, Shawnie." She disconnected.

Game on.