***FIONNA***

"Do we even have a game plan for this?" Kensi asks as we pile into the elevator.

"If we did, Russell's got it in his head," I say.

Harris casually leans against one wall, lining one of his hands with dark power. "No plan for us, huh? I'm good with that. The last time I fought in something with a plan, shit went sideways." His lips tighten as bad memories from his Prime 'Verse life come to mind and spill out for the rest of us to see. Memories of an angry bald man lashing out and snapping his leg, breaking it. Also a little blonde girl dying on a hospital bed. We've all seen that memory before, the death of Rachel Aster. Harris has been trying to find her ever since he came here, but to no avail. The system's still on the blink-

Ding ding.

The door opens, and we all crouch in the corners, ready to spring out ASAP. But the corridor beyond us is suspiciously empty. "I'm not liking this, guys," I say. I hold my hands out, ready to launch jets of fire around corners and spook any lurking enemies. Then, just when I think this isn't going to be a long, challenging enough task, the lights go out, plunging us into near-total darkness. Instinctively, the rest of us all circle around Gabe, seeing as he's the only one unable to naturally illuminate his way. We all have our own individual weaknesses, and this just happens to be his.

But he's not letting his weakness stop him from forming a deadly ice spike and holding it up, ready to throw. And let me tell you, I like going to the gym just to see Gabe throw. He's got a fearsome arm these days.

"All right, alien hunters," I whisper, turning my head around as close to three hundred and sixty degrees as I can. My heart pounds, pumping maybe ten percent blood and ninety percent adrenaline. "The monsters are loose. Let's go."

"Which way?" Gabe asks.

"The sub-basement stairs," Harris says. He holds up his flaming hand to show a sign on the wall, with an arrow pointing to the right reading "Sub-Basement." "Very helpful."

Above our heads, the ceiling trembles. Dana must be trying to earthquake Russell into submission again.

"Hey!" Male voices call after us from down the hall, in the opposite direction from where we're looking to turn. Right away, Gabe semi-blindly throws his spike, forcing the guards - I see two of them, light scrivs both - to duck or else their guts will explode. One of them sends bolts at us, which Kensi blocks with a light-gauntleted arm. The other reaches for a walkie-talkie on his belt, and I stick my hand around Kensi so I can blast him. In the process, I take a few light flechettes in my hand, howling in pain even though the light leaves no marks on me.

"You okay?" Kensi asks.

"Ahh...yeah, I'm good." I flex my left arm, rotating my wrist until I hear some joint cracking. I better not be getting early-onset arthritis or something - I do that a lot.

"GANGWAY, LADIES!" Harris jumps between me and Kensi, with Gabe beckoning us to his side.

I follow Harris for a moment, unsure what he's got in mind. "What are you..." Then I fall silent when I see him coating the walls, floor, and ceiling with copious amounts of dark energy, sticking to the walls and shining venomously.

"Back, back, back!" he says to me, walking backwards himself and spraying the walls even more. Ahead of us, the two guards back away as well, widening the gap between us. "When I tell you to, light the wall to your left on fire!"

"What, like it's an oil slick?" I ask. "Hell, it looks like one."

"Something like that." We come back up to the intersection where the sign directs us to the sub-basement. "Go! Fire! Now!"

All right. Fire. Right away, the dark slicks spark and spread flames down the corridor, sending those two guards scattering for good against an advancing wall of blazing doom.

"Shit, Harris!" Gabe gapes at us, as does Kensi. I think they're both wrestling with the same dilemma - run from us screaming, or to us for a kiss? "I thought you were part-dog," he says, "not part-dragon!"

Harris delivers his most adorable wink ever. "Who says I'm not both?"

Another rumble overhead - but it's not from Dana this time. In response to the fire, the sprinklers in the ceiling go off, spraying us all. Harris and I both recoil, and the lingering traces of flame on our hands go out in wisps of smoke. Now it's our turn to be disadvantaged in this fight - especially mine, because I don't have a backup elemental like Harris does. I stick to Kensi like glue, and she drags me down the hall hand in hand. Behind us, Gabe freezes the sprinklers into ice walls that block the intersection completely.

When we finally reach the door to the sub-basement stairs, Kensi pulls me in. Immediately, we almost slip and fall - even in this stairwell, the sprinklers are going full force. At least we have emergency lighting, though. I grab hold of Kensi, helping her keep her balance on the top step - although, because she's bigger, she almost takes me down with her.

As she carefully steps over the edge, still holding my hand, I say, "This could've been hella funny for all the wrong reasons."

Gabe and Harris come in and follow us ladies downstairs, treading carefully. Gabe, in particular, has trouble keeping balance because he's got the biggest feet, and the steps are surprisingly narrow. It's like they don't want people getting in or out of the sub-basement...

...right.

Luckily, the sub-basement proves to be a less expansive area than the potentially labyrinthine corridors upstairs (thank God those proved easy to navigate, huh?) It's just a single room with a loud machine pumping water that I'm sure comes from the river above us, as well as a small, windowed cube off to one side.

"Office?" Harris asks, tilting his head at the cube.

"As a make-out place, it's not exactly in my top ten," Gabe comments.

"But as a hiding place for buried treasure?" I ask, getting ready to burn my way through the lock.

Kensi, however, holds me back and tries the door - it's open.

"How'd you know?" I ask.

"Women's intuition," she says, pointing her thumb at her chest.

"Or unicorn power?" I say with a grin.

She realizes she's still wearing that same rainbow unicorn shirt she slept in last night, then she bursts out laughing. And yet she still manages to stand back and invite me to go in ahead of her with a flourish.

I'm more than a bit suspicious, again, because this office is totally devoid of people. Shouldn't there be someone down here minding the store? Or is this particular engineer, desk jockey, whatever he or she or they are, out to lunch? Probably eating some cheap egg salad sandwich or something. Who actually eats egg salad, anyway? I'm guessing egg salad only based on the smell in here. Disgusting. Never let me be caught dead even considering eating one of those things except in case of serious emergency.

While the others rifle through desk drawers, I check the boxes piled up in the far corner. Most of them are empty, except for one or two near the bottom. One is filled with paper files of some kind - do I really need to know what's in there? Not now, but they'll probably be important later. They usually are.

The other box has no lid, and sits upside down, so I can pick it up cleanly. I expect more files to spill out all over my feet, but no. Instead, there's an old-timey TV, a box full of cathode ray vacuum tubes and crap. It even has a pair of VHF/UHF dials next to the broken screen. Kneeling, I pick up the heavy box and examine the dials, where I see what looks like a brand name between them: "Peppermint." Never heard of it.

Wait a second. The screen looks like it's been broken in specific, even strategic ways. There are two pieces missing from the corners, diagonal to each other. Then there's a good-sized chunk missing from the center, and not in a random, shard-like shape like the corner pieces.

It looks like an arrowhead.

"Guys?" I place the TV on the nearby desk, turning the screen so everyone can see it. "What shapes were the pieces of the Mirror we found?"

"You don't think...?" Gabe breathes.

"This is the Black Mirror, isn't it?" Kensi looks around frantically. "Tell me we've got the missing pieces!"

Harris and I both pat our pockets, exchange glances, and shake our heads.

"Goddammit," Kensi groans. "Russell must have them."

"Then we gotta go help him!" Gabe says. "Fionna, come with me!"

"Hey, what the hell?" Harris spreads his arms wide as he gives Gabe a surprised look. "I thought we were partners!"

"I know." Gabe grabs Harris' hand with both of his. "So I'd rather not see you go down too. You and Kensi can stay here and guard the box, all right?"

"I hate box-guarding duty," Harris whines, kicking an imaginary pebble.

I turn to Kensi, who's looking no less happy to have to stay down here, but she'll do it for the greater good. She hugs me, kissing my forehead, nose, and mouth in quick succession. "Be safe, okay?" she asks.

"No promises," I say, putting a little extra flutter into my eyelashes to make her laugh. Off to one side, I hear Gabe kiss Harris goodbye as well, and then I follow him out of the office, back to the stairwell.

No sooner do we open the door, however, than the ground shakes around us again. Then it dawns on me that the sprinklers aren't going anymore - although the stairs are still wet.

Then Dana appears at the top of the steps - or, at least, on the landing halfway between this level and the basement above. The tremors intensify, and Gabe, fighting to ignore his earthquake instincts just like I am, freezes about half the steps between us and her.

"Gonna try and make me slip and fall and break my hip?" Dana scoffs. "Please. I'm neither an old woman nor a Wet Bandit." She steps very slowly down, keeping us on edge more than any earthquake ever can, sure-footed as a mountain goat. "One advantage to being among the few scrivs to have a double elemental - and while we're on the subject, why is it that only former humans get double elementals, not natural-born scrivs? Oh, but that's not important." She reaches the part Gabe froze and keeps on going, inexorably.

"That's far enough," I say, holding my again-flaming fist less than two feet from Dana's face. "I'm pretty sure you're not actually using the Black Mirror right now, so we're just gonna take it off your hands. Long-term loan, you get it?"

"It's not yours to loan out," Dana reminds me. "And I don't give you permission."

"That's okay," I say while Gabe subtly doubles down on his icing of the steps. "We're taking it anyway, with or without you."

"But there's a piece missing you don't even have," Dana laughs. "And once my people find it, good luck recovering it yourselves."

"We'll find it," Gabe says. "We do crazier shit all the time. Six impossible things before breakfast every day."

Dana bends down so she's right up close and personal with us. "I don't think so, kids." She then blows on her hands, releasing a huge black cloud into our faces. The dark energy forces us to stagger backwards, coughing as it coats our respiratory systems like toxic mold.

Actually, it's not so much interfering with our breathing (other than the coughing) as it is making me dizzy. I fall to the ground, my heartbeat thudding in my ears again as my vision goes black...but only for a moment.

Next thing I know, I'm looking up at Kensi's sweetly smiling face. "Did we get it?" I ask blearily.

"Oh, we got it, all right," she laughs, stroking my hair. "We got it right up the ass."

"I take it that's a no?"

Her smile vanishes, then she helps me sit up - I realize I'm on a cot. "At least you're awake. Same can't be said for Gabe, though."

I cough up a bit of black dust like a coal miner - if this shit gives me cancer, Dana, I'm suing the panties off you. Then I look over Kensi's shoulder to see, through a Plexiglas barrier with a small circle of holes in the middle like at the movie theater box office, Harris and Gabe in a small, harshly lit cell. Gabe's on a cot too, dead to the world, looking like he's been laid there by rough hands as opposed to lying there on his own. Harris nervously paces the floor before sitting next to him, rubbing his knuckles against Gabe's rough jaw. It has no effect, even though he's normally a light sleeper.

"How long have we been down here?" I ask.

"Approximately twelve hours," says an unfamiliar male voice. Deep, accented. Middle Eastern, maybe, crossed with English.

On the other side of this cell, separated from us by another Plexiglas wall, stand Russell and the voice's owner. Exactly as I guessed, he looks Middle Eastern, with his brown skin, sharp features, and gray hair.

"Hi, guys," Russell says with a cheery wave. He introduces me to his new friend (I guess Kensi and Harris have already had the pleasure.) "Fionna Lee, Ariel Mazouz." He pronounces the man's name "Ah-ree-el," the way Sebastian says the Little Mermaid's name, but without the Jamaican accent, thank God.

"Nice to meet you, Ariel," I say, taking care to mimic Russell's pronunciation as best I can. "What are you in for?"

"The same thing you are in for, I suppose," Ariel says. "I've been in this cell for a week now, all because Dana Jackson insisted on refusing to answer my bosses' calls. They're quite keen to get their invention back." He scoffs, crossing his arms. "I thought I could convince Dana to help me help her keep the Black Mirror safe. As it turns out, I can't trust her any more than I can trust the Peppermint Corporation's board of directors."

"Peppermint?" Kensi repeats.

"That was the brand name of the TV," I tell her.

"And the name of the company who controls the rights to the Black Mirror," says Ariel. "Which they would much rather have back...for some nefarious purpose, I suspect."

I nod as if I'm understanding a word he says. In my mind, though, I'm filled with thoughts of a different color. A blond demon dude color. Gabe's still asleep, probably because he's heavier than I am. So whatever sedative shit that dark attack from Dana put into our systems is still working through him.

And if he's still asleep...

"Whatever you do," I say as I lie back on the cot, "don't let me or Gabe wake up."

"What?" Kensi asks.

Ignoring her, I tell Harris, "Don't touch him, okay? I need him to stay asleep."

Harris pulls his hand from Gabe's face as if it burned him. (Ironic, I know.) "What? Wait a sec, is this that-"

"Yes, it's that thing," I say with an impatient hand-wave. "Just...leave me alone, okay? I need to sleep too!"

"Would you even be able to sleep, if you're trying to force yourself to do so?"

Ariel's got wise words, but I have to shut them, and everything else, out of my mind. Because right now, I'm sure Gabe's subconscious is trying to connect to Alex's. And I want to be in on the dream conference call too.

Normally, we can't exactly control the timing of our dream-sharing.

But tonight, I have to.

I don't know why, but I'm sure if Gabe and I talked to Alex, he could help us.

He would help us.

I'm counting too hard on this, aren't I?