***ALEX***

When Mom comes up to Gabe and me, the first thing she does is think, Are you all right, boys?

Yeah, I think back. We're both fine.

Mom turns to Gabe, and he nods. Yeah, what he said.

"All right, that's enough of the sickly sweet reunion," grumbles Leah. "Back away from the prisoners, boys."

"Nobody here is a prisoner," Ross says emphatically.

"Bullshit," Luca calls out. I flash him the thumbs-up. "Your attack dog here is looking to go crazy on all of us if you don't leash her up."

"Not all of you," Leah says, turning her gun towards Ross. "Just Alpha. Or, since I'm no longer pretending to respect him as my superior, I'll call him by his first name now. That should make things much easier, eh, Ross?"

"Lambda," Ross says, holding up his hands. "Calm down. Now, let's try to think this through. Are you working against me because you truly believe what we're doing is wrong?"

"Of course," Leah says. "I'm sure you've heard the reports about so-called UFO sightings over different cities back east?" She turns around long enough to turn on the TV, where the morning news is talking about a similar UFO sighting a few hours ago over Bearville. I'm initially confused by the presence of blue sky at sunrise in the news report, but then I realize that this must be...

"Hold the phone," I say, pointing at the screen. "Are we on Earth?"

"Didn't anyone tell you?" Paul asks. "We had to cross the Bridge in Spellman to get here. Don't worry, we're still actually in Spellman. Just under the bay."

"Yeah..." I say slowly. I'm now paying more attention to the news story. According to the reporter, the lights appeared over Bearville at 5:12 in the morning, about an hour ago. That fits with the timing of the universe-breacher bomb in the Second 'Verse. How many more of these "UFOs" have there been? And have they been showing up in all three dimensions of the Prime 'Verse?

"You see this?" Leah says, pointing animatedly at the TV screen with her free hand. "This is what happens when you make deals with devils from worlds beyond ours."

"I didn't 'make a deal,' as you say," Ross points out. "I've just been getting useful info from someone from the other side."

"You've been working with a madman!" Leah cries. "A madman, and a liar. Preston Holly is one of them. He's a scriv, and he's been double-crossing you all this time, you goddamn fool!"

Ross lets out a single loud, harsh, very fake laugh. "I'm with the curly-haired young man on this one. I'm calling bullshit."

"I hate to say it, but La Bitca here is right," Gabe says. "Preston Holly's a scriv. There's actually two types of scrivs - light and dark. And most of the ones you were told are evil dark creatures, they're actually light."

Leah turns to Gabe and heaves a hyper-dramatic sigh. "Thank you. Wait a minute...what the hell is a 'bitca?'"

"It's a Buffy reference," I say breezily. "I don't think you wanna know the details."

Leah seems to catch my drift, though. She lets out another sigh. "It's an insult, isn't it? I suppose I had it coming, after all those nasty remarks I made about you," she says, briefly glancing over to Gabe.

"Is that your way of apologizing to me?" Gabe asks. "'Cause you're too proud to say you're sorry?"

"Well, you'd know all about being proud, wouldn't you?" Leah says, turning her gun on Gabe now. "Isn't that what your people say? 'Out and proud?'"

Mom and I both step in front of Gabe, glowering at Leah. "Put the gun down," I say. "Now."

"Hah! Or what?" Leah cries.

"You're turning your gun on everyone who talks to you," Mom says. "Pardon my French, but what the fuck is your problem?"

"Believe me, this sort of thing, coming from her..." Gideon rolls his eyes. "It's not a surprise. Not at all."

Leah scoffs at Gideon. "You make me sound like a psychotic bitch."

"That's because you are a psychotic bitch," Gideon says. "Why do you think I ran away? I couldn't take it anymore!"

"I don't know you!" Leah says. "I don't know who-"

Gideon points to himself. "I love these eyes," he says, his voice breaking. "You want them back...Mother?"

Leah starts, then backs away, a look of revulsion on her face. She can't resist the truth anymore, and yet, she's still trying to do exactly that. "I..." She gulps nervously as she looks up at Gideon's face. "I don't have a son."

"Yes, you do." He keeps his voice as level as he can, but it's clear to everyone he wants to cut loose and howl in her face. "You know how many times I told you I was a boy? You know how much anguish I felt being forced to pretend I wasn't?"

"Daniela, c-could we discuss this at another time?" Leah asks. She's legit scared of Gideon, as well she should be, but she's also got the gun hanging loosely at around waist height. Someone could easily jump out and take it right now. But is it loaded? Is the safety on? Maybe it would be better not to risk it.

"What's there to discuss?" Gideon growls. "You hurt me for years because you couldn't accept that I wasn't the human girl you thought I should be. There's really nothing left to say."

"And it's really not the reason why we're all here," Leah points out. While Gideon turns away in disgust, she raises the gun again before continuing. "Ross, back on subject. You were wrong about Preston Holly. Everything you knew about why you started Project Red Rain to begin with, it's all a great big pile of lies. So, what are you gonna do next? And please, for the love of God, don't say 'I'm going to Disneyland.'"

"You'll forgive me for not believing you right away," Ross says, crossing his arms and staring down the barrel of Leah's gun.

I catch Gabe's eyes flicking between Leah and her gun. No, I think, knowing exactly what he's thinking. Don't do it.

Someone's gotta do it, he says.

What, and get shot in the chest? Or the face? Or the junk? I don't think so. Let's at least wait until she's not actually aiming at anyone.

Oh, so when she gets tired of holding it up? 'Cause I can't imagine she can hold it up for very long. Heavy gun, stick-thin arms and all that.

I nod twice. Yeah. Exactly.

"Well, what the hell are you waiting for?" Leah asks. "Pretty soon, Holly's armies are gonna start destroying cities right and left in all three dimensions. Then they're gonna destroy the cities that have been set up by dead mortals in the Second Universe, so the dead will have nowhere to go. They'll probably put the mortals in concentration camps like Nazis, then kill 'em all. And it'll all be your fault for agreeing to fight a war you could never win."

Russell blows a raspberry at Leah. "Gee, thanks for the confidence booster."

"I wasn't talking about you," Leah says.

"You might as well have," Russell retorts. "You really think we can't win against Holly?"

"He can't," Leah says, gesturing to Ross with her free hand. She still won't lower the gun, though. "He went about it completely the wrong way, creating these two" - here she points the gun at me and Gabe, very briefly, before training it on Ross again - "completely against the rules of nature, then waiting seventeen years to tap into their abilities. But you - I have every confidence in you." She looks around the room. "I dunno about you, but the last thing I wanna see is a scriv soldier about to shoot me dead. I'd much rather live in a universe where we're not under attack from angry afterlife armies, thank you very much."

"Look, you have to understand my motivation here," Ross says. "My brother died, then the scrivs killed him in the Second Universe. If...Alex, let's just be hypothetical here. If you were in my shoes, if Gabe had died and then been killed again...wouldn't you have wanted to do the same things I did?"

"Maybe I would," I admit. "But if someone tells me everything I've been doing is all based on a big trick, I'd be a little more willing to listen. Because everything you've done...it's not all been good. You made Elijah Emery go totally insane, for one thing. You faked his death, buried him away, and then when he got out, he started killing the children of everyone who worked for you." I level a serious death glare at him. "He killed my girlfriend. He killed Luca's friend. He tried to kill Paul. And you expect me to see you as a hero?"

"Who told you we faked Emery's death?" Ross asks quizzically. "He really did die. That Emery you saw...that was his second body, from the Second Universe."

"What?" I'm not the only one asking this question.

"I actually spoke to Romeo Juliet Iota and Juliet Delta Kappa a few weeks after the whole Coldfire Creek debacle," Ross says. "Iota told me the first thing Elijah wanted to know was where he was buried. He still thought he stood a chance of returning to his original body. But that's not how it works."

"What?" I ask again. I remember having counted on that being a way for Fionna to possibly come back to life, only for that chance to be crushed when it turned out that it would take too long for her soul, her second body, or whatever, to be fixed up. "Then how does it work?"

Russell takes over the discussion at this point. "Once your Prime body is dead, that's it. It's never gonna operate again. I think I know where you got that impression, though. Sometimes, people mishear the whole 'second body' thing as their souls being removed from their original bodies, with the chance of returning to the original if it's still otherwise in good condition. But no. That's your second body that you're in. Those are kept in pods at the Terminal, and they only activate when the Prime body dies. But if you don't die of natural causes, then your second body will have the same injuries, and it's up to the Terminal doctors and surgeons to patch you up."

By now everyone's staring at him with open mouths. "Hey," he says, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't understand it all that well either. I keep telling you guys, Annie's the one you wanna go to with crazy scientific questions. She knows the technical details better than I do, and she's better at explaining them in ways regular non-science-y people can understand."

"Maybe next time," I say.

Leah sighs, then raises her gun on Ross again. Dammit, I think. Why didn't I grab it from her when I had the chance?

"Bottom line, this little experiment is done," Leah says. "Honestly, I thought of a number of ways I could bring this down. I was considering shooting one or both of these boys - no, no, don't anybody start attacking me now," she says, glaring at me and Gabe as we each take one step closer to her. "I said I was being honest. But I decided, why shoot them? They're innocent. It's an accident of birth that they're here. But the one who orchestrated that accident, the one whose actions made me so paranoid about losing my child that I took my family to Earth - that's right, I wasn't aware of Emery's death being real either - I figured he should pay for ruining so many people's lives. And for what? Science?"

For a split second, Leah relaxes. It's not long, but it's a window of opportunity, and Gabe and I both take it.

We jump on Leah, Gabe going for the gun while I take her other arm to further subdue her.

We fight for a few seconds.

Then the gun goes off with a deafening bang.

Next thing I know, there's a huge, bleeding hole in the back of Gabe's head, and he's falling to the ground.

Leah drops the gun, looking horrified. She says something, probably pleading that it was an accident, that she didn't mean to do it.

But I don't hear it. All I hear is the blood rushing in my ears.

I kneel by Gabe's side, shaking his shoulders, trying in vain to make him get up.

I refuse to believe what I'm seeing. My brother is not dead. Gabe is not dead.

I look up at Leah, who's still got that horrified expression on her face. "YOU!" I scream. "WHAT DID YOU DO?"

Before she, or anyone else, can stop me, I jump on Leah all over again, pinning her to the floor. Maybe the reason why I don't start pounding her into the dust right away is because I'm fighting the conditioning that tells me it's not okay to hit women.

But this woman just shot my brother dead. She deserves no mercy.

People are yelling at me to stop, but I pay them no attention as I punch Leah in the face one, two, three, four times.

On the fifth punch, she and I lock eyes. Then it happens. For the second time in my life, I project my consciousness into someone else's mind.

What are you doing? Leah's voice asks me. How are you doing this?

How could you do that? I scream at her. Even in my thoughts, I'm screaming and crying. How could you kill Gabe?

But...but...

Don't you dare say it was an accident, you bitch! You're gonna pay for this! I'll kill you right here, right now!

No! No, please...stop! Don't do this! I'm not a killer any more than you are!

I'm seeing the world through Leah's eyes. I'm seeing flashes of old memories of hers. Stuff Gideon told me about before. Like the way she'd cut the feathers off his wings to make sure she wouldn't fly. And there's a few images of her slapping Gideon back when he lived as Dani, flatly telling him he was a girl and he would learn to accept it. It's only intensifying the rage and hatred I feel right now.

I'm in control of Leah's body, just like Elijah was in control of all his victims.

I reach forward and grab the gun again, the gun which she'd dropped after shooting Gabe. It's hard to make her lift it, but I manage to get her to put the business end of it to her temple.

NO! The voice in Leah's thoughts is high and tight with the terror she deserves to feel right now. No, please! It's not-

Too late? It absolutely is too late.

No, no, no, no, no!

Beg and cry all you want. Those are gonna be your last words.

Leah's clearly fighting to regain control of her body, because I have a difficult time forcing her finger to reach the trigger. Cries of alarm ring out all around me, but they're not going to stop me now.

I make Leah pull the trigger.