***ALEX***

Punching bags are such innocent victims. They're designed for the express purpose of being beaten up repeatedly. Maybe it's for exercise, maybe it's for getting out pent-up aggression. Maybe it's a little of both.

It's definitely a little of both in my case. Rage is a toxic feeling, and if I don't tire myself out, I'll feel it burning holes inside me all day. So I punch this bag to the beat of some good old-fashioned Dear Hunter on my iPod speakers. The Black EP, for industrial-strength venting in this industrial-looking room. I think it might have begun as a factory break room, and it's still covered in a thin layer of some kind of grease.

"Jab, jab, left cross. And whoa, you got a mean right hook there, son."

I freeze. Not literally this time, to my surprise. Then I turn on my heel to see the one I'm sentenced to share this particular dream with. Elijah, wearing a tank top and basketball shorts not unlike the ones I'm wearing right now, but in white instead of black like mine. White that shines every so often when the half-dead fluorescent lights over our heads flicker.

Behind him are the ropes for the centerpiece of this pit-sweat-smelling boxing gym - the ring. I race forward and pin him to these, practically foaming at the mouth as I spit venom into his face. "If you call me that again, I'll fucking kill you."

"Whoa, hey, cool your jets." I haven't pinned him hard enough - he's still able to talk without gasping for breath.

Using one arm, I push harder, forcing his head between two of the ropes. My free hand, I use it to point at my own mouth. "Read my lips: I. Am. Not. Your. Son."

Now his voice is ragged from the pressure of the rope on his trachea. "I know you wish you could change your biology, but...wish in one hand, shit in the other-"

"SHUT UP!"

"Look, Alex, the truth hurts-"

"YOU WANT ME TO KILL YOU, HUH? YOU WANT ME TO SNAP YOUR GODDAMN NECK?"

He pushes me back, then pulls his head out from between the ropes. A black line covers his skin. Rope dirt, I think. "Why so pissed? I didn't call you 'son' this time."

"No." It's a struggle to not scream at him, but even in this dream, I'm already starting to lose my voice. "You said my name. You don't get to say my name." I let go of him, returning my attention to the punching bag where it belongs.

"Then what am I supposed to call you? 'Kid?' 'Dude?'" That one sounds so wrong in his Southern drawl. "Oh, oh, I got it...'Turn around, Bright Eyes!'"

In spite of myself, I obey that command. "Oh God, Gabe inherited your singing voice too."

"Hey, before Red Rain happened, I was the karaoke king in my squadron."

I shake my head at him. "Seriously? You're gonna try to sing me an 80s classic? Is that your way of trying to bond with me?"

"Maybe...?"

Now Elijah's seeing my best "Do Not Want" meme-face. "I don't have a father to bond with. I never have. Why start now?"

"I tried to kill you. I killed your girl. I'm sorry, Alex."

Am I wrong, or does he sound sincere about it? "You expect me to forgive you?"

"No."

"Good. 'Cause I never will."

"I know." Jesus H. Christ, he's actually tearing up. Now I don't think he's sincere anymore. "You met me at rock bottom. I thought revenge would help me feel better about what I'd lost. Hell..." I hear him sniffling, wiping his nose. "Revenge is a virus, Alex, and I infected you with it. When I died, the second time...that was me knowing I'd gone beyond redemption."

"Yeah, yeah. You lost your religion."

"But then I got it back, 'cause if there ain't no God, why am I still bouncing around in the Third 'Verse and shit? Why am I still cropping up in your dreams?"

I stop punching the bag, mostly because I'm all sore at this point. My arms, my shoulders, my core, they all feel like they've got spiky cacti tied to them. "Fuck if I know. All I know is, you're not welcome here."

Elijah ignores this and prattles on, as usual. "I've gotten too many second chances to count. Even the first time I died. Did you know..." He laughs to himself, that Gabe-like laugh of his, and for once it feels like a real laugh. "Did you know I used to be a Guardian?"

"What, for your human?"

"Yeah. And his family. His wife. His sons." He looks up, his eyes glittering with tears again. "Your mom's human, your brother's human, and your human. One big happy family."

I turn off the music, my muscles still crying in protest with each inch I move. "Isn't that swell."

"It became my fantasy," he continues. "What my life would've been if not for Red Rain. I lived it for years, and I thought...I thought, 'cause of Red Rain, the rest of my human's family didn't have any angels or demons." He takes his turn at the punching bag, attacking it with as much aggression as I had built up inside. "Imagine...how I...felt...when I...found..." He stops talking for a while so he can punch. Right hook, jab, jab, left cross. Is he imitating my style, or did I get his muscle memory encoded in my genes? "I walked into Jensen Troy's office one day for a performance review," he says when he finds time to take a break. "He wasn't there, but he had files out on his desk. Files with your faces, yours and Gabe's and Darla's."

"Congratulations, you even know my mom's name."

"From watching over her human." Elijah punches away for another minute or so. He can't keep this up for an extended period of time, I notice. Probably because he's older than I am, and a little less in shape. "The kicker was, these were files on you three. Not your humans. They specified you were born in Heaven." He laughs again, this time an embarrassed laugh. "That was when I really lost my religion. Knowing I had family - biological only, but still - that not only I hadn't met, but that they were literally made without my permission." He grimaces, and I know what's coming before he even says it, from the images in his thoughts. "Y'all ever had a little cattle prod stuck up your ass? Take my word for it - don't."

So that's where Gabe and I came from. "And here I thought they just gave you a Playboy or two and a cup to jizz in."

"Nah, I think that would've broken the bank for them Red Rain cocksuckers. Oh wait...that insulted Gabe right there, didn't it? His demon and his human both. Hell, I got the impression your human swung both ways too-"

I clear my throat to get him to stop rambling, even for a moment. "You went psycho 'cause you found out Gabe and I existed. My angel, his demon."

"I mean, it ain't like I was a woman forced to carry a child of rape 'cause the motherfucking theocrat governor of her state blanket-banned abortions, but that was...that was probably the closest a man could ever feel to that kind of pain." He leans against the punching bag, pretending to dust off his knuckles - which are bleeding because he didn't bother wrapping them. "This might be too personal a question, but...your mama, did she ever consider aborting you and Gabe? I mean, when she inevitably found out she was gonna have one healthy baby and one who looked to her like the Antichrist?"

"My mom's religious, but not that much."

"So she considered it?"

"No. She never thought Gabe was the Antichrist. And she was never gonna abort us."

"Your mama's a real saint."

I'm not sure if his compliment should please or disgust me on Mom's behalf. "You went psycho 'cause you found out about me and Gabe. You felt robbed of that fatherhood experience. And so you came to Coldfire Creek to have that revenge."

"Don't sound like I'm so proud of it." He comes across the floor, the tang of his own workout sweat cutting sharply through the already polluted air with each step he takes, and he sits in front of me, cross-legged. "The rest is history. And I see you're still feeling the ill effects of my actions."

"How so?" I scoff.

"I didn't get my first ink till I was nineteen, already in the Army." He points to my upper arms, one after the other. "Don't even know what that one is," he says while looking at the ink-scar on my left, "but the point is, you went and got yourself tatted up younger than I did. Clearly you had some pain you wanted to numb with more pain."

"Sure, sure, go on and psychoanalyze me-"

"And look at this." He spreads his arms, gesturing all around us. "You ain't bringing Fionna 'round here. Not in these deep, dark, filthy recesses of your lizard brain. You wanna fight, don't you? You probably have some underground fight club you're part of in your real life."

"Not underground."

"Whatever. I bet if y'all took off that wife-beater, you'd have bruises all over you. Your buddies bare-knuckling you in the abs, and that's even before shit gets elemental-"

I jump to my feet, my wings flapping for a moment and a feather or two brushing my legs while drifting to the floor. "You wanna see? Fine. I'll show you." I pull my tank top off and toss it aside like someone's going to catch it.

Elijah stands up slowly, peering at me from a distance. "Burns, too? You work out with fire elementals? What kind of ice specialist are you?"

"Just thought you'd appreciate it." I lean down to pick up my discarded tank top. Being black, any stains it may have picked up from its ten seconds or so on the dirty floor are invisible. "Seeing how much of a beating I can take. Seeing how much I'll gladly abuse something you consider part of yourself."

His jaw tightens, and he crosses his arms. "How much of your own bullshit are you swallowing? You think hurting yourself to get to me is the solution?"

"I hurt myself long before I knew you existed. I don't need another reason, but I've got one anyway."

"I suppose you're only dreaming this up to have an excuse to force me to hurt you, then." This is the moment when I expect him to sneer and jump into the ring, shuffling his feet with his dukes up. But no, all he does is lean against a pole. "I ain't playing this adolescent game. Hormones don't rule me like they used to."

Ironic that he thinks I'm the one playing games. "When the hell can I wake up?"

Elijah turns around to see a shaft of strong sunlight piercing the room as the door to the outside opens. "You gotta learn to live with your dark side, Alex. But don't let it control you. That was my undoing."

"Enough with the fatherly advice." For the first time ever, this incurable dreamer actually leaves a dream willingly, stepping into the light just to get the bloody hell away from Elijah.

The light floods my vision until my eyes get used to a less dank, disgusting environment. I don't think I've been here before, wherever "here" is. It looks like the waiting room for any doctor's office in the world, just without the old magazines piled up on a side table. Hell, the only furniture to be had is a pair of chairs, one of which I'm perched uncomfortably in, having fallen asleep in it. Gabe occupies the other one. He's awake, and shaking my shoulder.

"Hey..." I feebly try to push away his hand. I sound hungover, and I know I'm saying that while having never had one in my life.

Maybe that's why Gabe not only doesn't let go of me, but also keeps trying to make eye contact even when I won't. "Bad dream?"

"The worst. How'd you know?"

"I don't think you normally talk in your sleep. So imagine my surprise when I heard you screaming about wanting to snap my goddamn neck."

I roll my eyes. "Not yours, of course. Elijah's. Where were you? Couldn't be bothered to share a dream with me this time?"

Gabe keeps trying to get me to look at him. He must not be in his usual "you cheeky bastard" mood. "I was trying to wake you up after that for...I dunno how long. There's no clock in here. But you didn't wake up, and..." His eye contact campaign finally succeeds. "It was like you were were under some kind of sleeping curse. You scared the shit out of me, Alex."

"Sorry I activated your big-brother instincts."

He narrows his eyes. "The day will come..." He pulls me out of the chair and almost breaks my ribs hugging me. "...when you won't be." Guess he wasn't entirely not in his "you cheeky bastard" mood (yeah, I know, double negative. Judge me.) Not enough that he didn't have it in him to quote The Walking Dead.

I'm not kidding about the "breaking my ribs" thing, though. I mean, it's not like I'm not used to Gabe showing the love as only a demon can, but this time, it seriously hurts like hell. I must have taken more damage in the woods than I thought. Damage Kelly tried to help fix - she took moss from the trees around us and tried to channel her elemental through it to heal my wounds. Or something like that. The light Taser attack scrambled my brain, so my memory's a bit faulty. And I don't think she got all my wounds either. Maybe just the ones on my face, the only ones she could see.

So, yeah, maybe I've got a few more cracks and bruises on my ribs than I need. But you know what? From Gabe, I can take the pain of his embrace. Like Harris said, love is when you trust someone who makes you bleed.

Then I remember.

Harris is still missing.

Gabe picks up on my thoughts and sighs through his nose as he lets go of me. "You barely even got to know him," he says. "We gotta fix that. Seriously, I was dying for you to meet him."

I flash him a smile. "Things must've been serious."

"Deadly serious. He's that guy I didn't know I was missing until-"

One of the two doors leading out of this room opens and a slight redhead dude with an even more elfin face than Gabe's walks out. Right away, Gabe pushes me back and gets into a defensive posture, ready to fire ice bolts at our visitor.

For some reason, though, he can't. All he gets is a trickle of half-melted slush.

I copy him and get no better a result, and right away I find out why. As I raise my hand, my sleeve rides back a bit, exposing a heavy black band around my wrist. I have one on each wrist, actually, and Gabe has a pair as well.

All either of us can do at the moment is snarl, and that's what Gabe does. "You canceled our powers, Penner? Very unsportsmanlike."

I nudge him in the side. "Penner? Quali uhe zavuta?"

He raises his eyebrows. "Culo mayud esta zeukai."

Penner - I guess that's the redhead's name - chuckles lightly. "Secret twin language? Nah, I think it's just gibberish. You two seem a little closer than that. I should know - I had a twin back home, and we were so completely on the same wavelength, we didn't even need to talk. All telepathic, all the time for us."

"We tried that for a while," I say, shaking my head. "All the thoughts we shared overloaded our brains."

Rather than respond, Penner steps back and opens his door wider, allowing me and Gabe to step into his office. Unlike the windowless box that is the waiting room, this office has a small pair of windows that commands a view of a city full of ten-story concrete blocks, under a green sky with a yellow sunrise.

It's not a sky I recognize, but I've heard descriptions of it from talking to Gabe and Fionna in my dreams. We're in the Second 'Verse. Wait, this is what the Second 'Verse looks like when it's not perpetually nighttime? Identically-built Soviet-Russian concrete blocks all painted in a hideous rainbow of Day-Glo colors to tell them apart?

"Pardon the neon skyline." Penner hits a button between the windows, and the glass polarizes, darkening to protect us from the distractingly bright view. "Second 'Verse cities look better at night. They're looking to repaint them all, but I don't wanna know who or what they'll defund to make it happen..."

"Probably public schools," Gabe mutters. "Alex, did you know I haven't actually been to school since I died?"

"I do now. Should I be envious?"

Gabe shakes his head.

"Thought so."

Penner looks between me and Gabe with wide eyes, then bends down over his desk and picks up a tablet. I don't recognize the leaf logo embossed on the back - not Apple, not Microsoft. "Another thing Russell's doing wrong. Depriving you of an education...see, this is why the Guardian program's gone downhill. At least here in TAD, we educate you." He sighs regretfully. "But protecting you boys was the Troys' pet project, so we never stood a chance. Russell, you prick..." A glare crosses his face, then, with a small twitch, he breaks out in a would-be welcoming grin once again. "So...you two got yourselves in a spot of trouble yesterday, huh? Playing with the Black Mirror, unauthorized. Well, it's not like you'd get authority anyway-"

I clear my throat to stop his rambling. "Where are our friends?"

"We'll reunite you soon." Penner's got that ingratiating smile poised over folded hands. He's acting like a robot, and it's creeping me out. Same with Gabe, who can't help but look at him with what all my English-class vocab texts would call a moue of disgust. Now I'm seriously convinced Penner might actually be a robot. He plunges straight into the uncanny valley with his precise and delicate movements, his eerily fixed eyes that don't seem to blink, and his excessively perfect skin. Not that perfection's even possible - Gabe and I should know; we've had on-again, off-again, mutually abusive relationships with acne for years - but Penner looks like he doesn't even have pores for pimples to form.

"What day is it?" Gabe's thinking along similar lines as I am - if we keep on slamming Penner with questions, maybe he'll break before he breaks us.

"Friday, of course."

I gasp in mock surprise. Mock, but with a genuine undercurrent of shock. "Shit, am I missing class?"

"Does your class begin before eight in the morning?"

Okay, maybe Penner won't be so easily brought down, not if he's using our own tactics against us. "Uh...yeah." It's a lie, but he doesn't need to know that.

"Nice try, Alexander." First off, fuck. Second off, how does he keep that stupid smile fixed in place? Botox? Third off, he doesn't realize I don't use my full name? "Um...can I call you Alex?"

Jesus, another guy thinking he can be so familiar with me. "Call me what you want. I'll just call you a jackass."

"Naturally. It's what you boys do best, am I right?"

Gabe takes his turn to burst into the conversation. "Look, Alex isn't even involved with this crap. And unlike me, he's got a life. Just let him go, man."

"I will as soon as we confirm he's really not involved, beyond the tangential."

"You won't just take my word for it, jackass?"

Penner's smile finally slips a notch or two. "Cooperate with me, Alex."

Gabe tries and fails to stifle a giggle. "Unlike the Hulk, we like this guy when he's angry."

Penner, however, isn't taking any more shit. More businesslike than ever, he says, "You're a live Primer. How'd you know your friends were in town?"

"I sensed it in the Force." Gabe bumps fists with me. I'll never get over how cool it is that we can do it without looking.

"Mm-hmm. And Kelly and Tiberius? How were they involved?"

"His name is Ty," I correct him. "And they just followed me when I went to meet Gabe and Fionna and them."

"Mm-hmm." Penner zeroes in intently on his tablet screen, tapping it a couple of times. "This one's for both you kids - do you remember a boy named Harris McCallum?"

Gabe stiffens and sits up straight. "Of course I do."

"How'd you remember him?" I ask. "Even Russell forgot him."

"We have our ways." Another swipe of the screen. "One last thing - speaking of Russell, his research tells me you two Breakers have the ability to share dreams, even across universes. Alex, did your friends ever tell you anything about the Peppermint Corporation?"

I honestly can't remember if that ever came up in conversation with Gabe or Fionna. Or even Elijah, though I make it a point of forgetting any and all interactions I have with him as soon as possible. Peppermint...I wonder, is that the company that makes Penner's tablet? The leaf logo, it could be a mint leaf, maybe. Stylized.

Instinctively, I shake my head no. Note to self: share a dream with Gabe and Fionna as soon as possible so they can tell me everything they know about this Peppermint Corporation.

Penner stares through me, as if he expects me to lie to him. After a long, distressing minute of this, he closes the cover on his tablet and lays it down on the desk. As he does so, I catch, for a split second, a glimpse of two green marks, one on the inside of each wrist. I could be seeing things, but I swear those marks look just like the tablet's leaf logo, only smaller.

"You, Alex, are good to go. Follow me, please, and I'll get you home."

I stand up, as does Gabe, who asks, "You're not done with me?"

"Sorry, but no."

I grasp Gabe's shoulders, more to stop him lunging at Penner than anything else. "If he does anything to you, he'll have me to answer to. Got it, jackass?" I call over my shoulder.

"Got it," Penner says, sounding artificially cheerful once again. "But time is of the essence, Alex. You don't want to miss class, even if it is Friday, and you've got early-onset senioritis..." He titters at his own joke, sounding like a canned one-man laugh track.

I follow Penner out, but I keep looking at Gabe until the door closes between us. He looks very uncertain. And, worse, fearful.

What are these TAD and Peppermint people up to?

Before long, Penner brings me - along with Kelly and Ty, whom he collects from another office down the hall from his own - to a door in the building's basement. He knocks once, then opens the door, revealing the Terminal. Right ahead, that older woman in charge of the place stands up from her desk. "About time!" she yells, more at Penner than the rest of us. "I told you not to bring those Primers through..." Her eyes fall on me, and she gasps. "Oh, Simon, Simon, Simon...you're in for a real shitstorm, hurting this kid. Alex, here, you gotta get some sugar. Your friends too."

Kelly cocks her eyebrow at me. Just go with it, I think. And if you wanna talk about any of this with me, meet me at Smythe and Darknell's at ten.

"Ugh, if I'd have known...I ran out of cookies, dammit!" Grace flings her desk drawers open. "Well, I got a backup. These'll do for now." She tosses a Snickers to each of us live Primers. "But you kids need to get more sugar in you right away. Candy's nowhere near as good as cookies."

Alex, are you telling me to skip class? Kelly asks.

No, no, I wouldn't - I didn't say-

I'm gonna do it, she says. If something's wrong with our friends, I wanna help.

I look over to Ty, who mulls it over for a moment while chewing on his Snickers. I don't got any classes on Fridays. I'll meet you guys there. Ten, right?

Yeah.

Penner snaps his fingers and beckons Ty and Kelly to a door stamped with the Hell symbol in red. He opens the door for them and stands back while they pass through. Then he turns around and finds a door with Heaven's spiky cross on it.

"Don't trust him!" Grace blurts out. "He's with Peppermint!"

Before I can react, Penner pushes me through the door. I sprawl on the floor on the other side, back in Heaven.

Looking up, I see a futon on which I slept for a weekend.

I'm in the Smythes' basement.

And Lana Smythe is down here, fixing up the sheets on that futon.

"Alex? What the...are you all right?"

I groan like a zombie as I get to my feet. "Uh...hi. Yeah, but I'm gonna see you again later, okay? Getting coffee this morning." I notice my hand shaking a bit. "We're gonna need more ice cream in those affogati."

"What? But it's Friday. Don't you have class?"

"I know, I know..." I stagger over to the stairs. Do I look drunk? I totally look drunk. "It's just...there's a power play going on in the Second 'Verse, and my friends are in trouble, and school's not so important now..." I run up and out of the house, then take flight back to Balthazar. Along the way, it occurs to me, randomly, that I might not be able to chat with Juliet tonight. So I hastily text her and let her know.

I reach my dorm room window just in time to catch Luca about to leave for first-period psych class. I knock on the glass with my head (ow, ow, ow) until I get his attention, then he runs up and lets me in. "Alex! Dude, where the hell have you been all night? You're not even dressed for class!"

"Whatever." I close the window and strip down to my underwear - God, these clothes reek. And I need a shower. "Shit's going down again, buddy. Can't come to class today."

"What kind of shit?"

I dig into the closet for my shower stuff and a fresh set of clothes. "Second 'Verse shit."

The bell rings, announcing the start of first period. "You want me to help you out?" Luca asks.

"No, no, I'm good. Thanks." I pile everything on top of my clothes.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Just keep me posted on what I miss."

"Uh-huh, all right..." I run down the hall towards the showers, and Luca calls after me, "You sure you're okay? You look like you're having a panic attack!"

"I'm good!" I repeat forcefully before jumping into the shower room, turning one on, and standing under the stream, uncaring of the fact that it hasn't had time to warm up.

And, for at least twenty seconds, uncaring of the fact that I'm still in my boxers, which are now soaked and see-through and a pain to peel off.

Good thing I chose to skip class today. No way would I be able to focus, not when my mind's completely elsewhere. But what else can I do? I'm stuck here in Prime while God knows what happens to Gabe and Fionna in Second with those Peppermint people, whoever the hell they are.