***GABE***

Dammit, now I'm really regretting leaving TJ unattended, even if - no, especially if - it was because Harris and I were screwing instead. Seriously, where the hell could my cousin have gone? It's not like we're actually taking steps to ensure his head is entirely free of Penner's little possession virus. Shouldn't that be priority one for us? Not fucking? And certainly not taking unsanctioned, thinly-planned heist trips down to Peppermint HQ?

Though at least we got something out of it, even if we don't yet know what the hell those damn space rocks are good for. Knowing Peppermint, though, they're probably not good for anything at all. Quite the opposite.

"Come on, come on..." I pull my phone away from my ear so I don't have to hear the dial tone taunt me. And so I can shake the thing in frustration.

"Gabe, stop it." Harris grabs my wrist and steadies it. "You know those things have accelerometers, right? Shake 'em the wrong way and you might accidentally hang up."

"I thought you had to shake it like you were jerking off."

"That's how it was done in the old days, yeah..." Harris muses. "But still, better not to take any chances."

I sigh, then bring my phone back to my ear just in time to hear it pick up on the other end. "You've reached Patel Bros. Local Inc., LLC, M.D., Pnk.Fl.D, BAMF," says Yash with a soft laugh and a damn good Rahul Kohli accent. "For business enquiries of a non-essential nature, press one and wait for my assistant to take a number and insert it directly into your ar-"

"Cut the crap, Yash," I bark as I put the phone on speaker.

"Sorry," he says, shifting back to his standard American accent. "Couldn't resist. But hey, we're about to isolate the code Penner left on your guy's phone-"

"He's not my guy," I say. "Not in the way you're thinking."

"How do you know? I meant it in a brothers-in-arms kind of-"

"It's cool you've got the code," Harris cuts in, "'cause we're gonna need you to make some kind of antidote as soon as possible."

"You mean a vaccine?" Yash asks. "If you don't mind me getting all Digimon on you."

"First off," I say, irritated at this meandering, "we're Pokémon fans around here. And second, we need that antidote, that vaccine, whatever you wanna call it..." I pause because I realize I'm holding my phone the same way I would wring someone's neck. "Bottom line," I continue after a deep breath or six, "TJ's gone missing, and we think Penner's gotten into his head again."

"And what, summoned him to his side?" It's Aditya's voice, and he's laughing even more than his brother.

"Maybe," Harris says. "That's what we're trying to find out."

"Well, don't say anything further on the phone," Yash orders us. "Just come down to the Terminal. We'll be waiting."

"Who's 'we?'" I ask.

"The royal kind," Yash says in that Rahul Kohli voice again. Now I think about it, he also looks a lot like Rahul Kohli, though with a less magnificent beard because he's younger. Or so he appears. Second 'Verse peeps age slowly enough, but what about peeps from other 'Verses? Whichever number on that list the Terminal would be. I always thought it was meant to the One-and-a-halfth 'Verse myself. (Prime-and-a-halfth?" Maybe.)

"Point being-" Aditya says.

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," I say, making a "flapping my gums" gesture to get a laugh out of Harris. "Not over the phone. Not safe. Too many green ears listening in."

"I dunno," Harris says as I hang up on the Patel boys. "I usually see peppermint flavor come in blue packaging. Unless it's herbal tea."

"Nope," I laugh. "Gotta be actual tea, Moroccan-style, or it doesn't count."

"Didn't you say you were part-Moroccan once?" Harris asks as we set off down the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him gazing clinically at me, as if to figure out where such ancestry could hide under my white skin.

"Maltese," I correct him, "but it's not impossible we've got Moroccan in us somewhere. Especially when you remember how dark Alex is. Next to him, I'm as white as white gets."

"Except for your nipples." Harris winks as we leave the stairwell and run into the lobby. "I thought we white guys only ever had 'em pink, and yours are brown."

"Yeah, and Alex, his are pink like pepperoni." As Harris chokes on his own spit from laughing at the mental image I've served him piping hot, I add, "Mashing up angel and demon DNA like we do, it's given us some interesting features, if I do say so myself."

"Mm-hmm." Harris eyeballs my crotch. "Such as."

"Oh come on." I look around up and down the street and, seeing that it's empty at the moment, we jaywalk at about half a speedster's typical pace. "My junk ain't much more special than yours."

"Never let it be said I ever expected - or wanted - to be plowed by a foreign object the size of a PVC pipe." He winks again.

"Yeah, you're not wrong. I mean, who wants to die by dick? A big one breaking you in half? No fucking, thanks." Comma intentional, grammar fiends.

The nearest Terminal gateway is under Garrick High, which means we have to sneak over the fence outside the main entrance. Flying over it would be an easy fix, but the fence is topped with these little force field generators that make it impossible to come in at normal flight height. There is, however, a gap between the force field and the fence. A narrow gap, to be sure, but not too narrow.

"At least this fence isn't electrified," Harris comments as we scale it, careful to keep a good strong hold of the smooth, squared-off metal bars. "I've heard stories from...well, he's my cousin's boyfriend's brother. He's had some dealings with electric fences in his time."

"For real?" I pull myself over the top of the fence, feeling a hum as my back approaches the force field. Must be a tighter fit than I thought. Naturally, though, Harris has zero trouble getting in, being so much leaner than I am. He lets go of the fence and gracefully sails down to the ground on the inside, his wings catching the air to slow him down - and blocking the rain that's falling on our heads, having just restarted after a few dry hours. I land next to him, nowhere near as gracefully, but at least not damaging myself or my own wing-brella. (Insert Yondu yelling "I'M MARY POPPINS, Y'ALL!" here.)

"You big lunk." Harris slaps my ass as we start walking again. "I oughta teach you how to stick the landing."

"I'm not that big a flier," I say. "It's my demon side. Full disclosure - I'm a tad bit acrophobic."

"Secret's safe with me, Sweaty Elf Boy."

I laugh lightly, while also willing my traitorous genitals to stand the bloody hell down. "Hey, uh, maybe keep that nickname in the bedroom now, huh?"

"Or the shower," Harris points out.

"Or the shower," I agree, nodding. "But seriously, you've given it a very dirty association in my mind, especially after, uh, today."

"For which I will not apologize anytime soon, my prince."

Even as I smile in appreciation, I can't resist giving him a light chest shove. "I mean, it could've been worse. You could've said that name instead of my real one when you came."

"I'm not gonna not say your name when you bust my nut," Harris says solemnly. "If there's one thing I've learned from reading the old Cassandra Clare, it's that names have power."

"Which is why I only ever say your real one when you're pounding my ass. Or vice versa." Reaching the door ahead of him, I try it, only marginally surprised to find it's not locked.

Harris pouts at the door as I usher him through it. "I was so hoping to blow it up. Cover it in Dark energy, hit it with Fire at a distance-"

"Some other time, buddy."

He smirks at me. "Oh, that reminds me - one of these days, I still gotta introduce you to the joys of jerking off with Dark lube."

"Next time we jerk each other off, okay?"

"That's your favorite, right? Mutual handjobs?"

"Yeah."

"Sixty-nine's mine, but I wouldn't use Dark lube for that. It tastes fucking gross."

"Was I so horny myself when I was a teenager?" Harlan waves to us from the door to Hell Hall, a narrow row of lockers just inside the door. Even with this school's small student body, it can crowd easily, especially during finals. In the middle of Hell Hall is a glass display case which doubles as a secret Terminal entrance. "Don't answer that, by the way," Harlan adds as he opens the door and waits for us to walk on through. Both of us being dead, of course, I don't have to hold Harris' hand going in, but he insists on doing so anyway. "Rhet-"

"Rhetorical?" Harris asks wryly.

"Fuck, you know me too well."

Grace Muscat waves us over to her desk, where she holds a plate of cookies as usual. Also as usual, she's got a bit of a disgusted look on her face, probably from overhearing our convo. She does, however, manage to morph that into a smile of pride when Harris and I each take one - as does Harlan after a second's hesitation. "Nobody here's allergic to nuts, right?" she asks.

"If we were," Harris says, popping his cookie into his mouth in one bite, "we couldn't enjoy your good work, could we?"

"Good." Grace grins. "I've never tried this coconut recipe before. What do you think?"

By this time, I've already eaten half of mine, just a split second before she specified the flavor. Ugh...coconut. Way too sweet and flaky. Tropical flavors tend not to get along with my taste buds. More so for Alex, though, from what I've seen. Whatever, I'm going to eat all of this as fast as I can. One bite, just like Harris. Actually, no, at this point it's two. But still, as close as I can get to his level of om-nom-nommage.

"It's cool," Harris says with a smile of his own. "Not my favorite, but nice."

I reach up to my mouth and pretend to pick something out of my teeth. Which I'll have to do later, because some of those little coconut bits really are stuck in there. Flaky, remember? "Next time, you should add chocolate."

"I would," Grace says, "but Annie keeps rationing my supplies."

"She got to you too?" Harlan groans. "Damn, she's making life miserable for everyone these days." He stares down at the three quarters of coconut cookie still in his hands. "Anyone else wanna eat this? This really isn't my flavor."

"Beggars can't be choosers." Fionna emerges from a nearby door and narrows her eyes at Harlan, then looks beyond him to see me and Harris. "Hey guys! Finally, you get here too! Where've you been?"

Harris at least has the decency to wait until after she's hugged us both to say, "Ehh, the usual. Playtime, you know?"

"We played a little too long," I say with a heavy sigh, "and then we found out TJ was missing."

"Wait, what?" Fionna looks around at Harlan, especially. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"I thought they already told you!" Harlan says, holding up his hands.

"Told us what?" Kensi asks as she leans out the door. Behind her, I see the Park brothers wearing black-tinted goggles as they take small gun-like devices to the remains of the meteorite we stole from Peppermint. No, not guns. Handheld welding torches, judging from the solar-bright flares of light at their business ends. I blink, but it's too late - there are two dark patches obscuring my vision like sunspots, patches that shift from black to deep purple like bruises with each successive blink.

Curiosity strikes me, giving me a welcome opportunity to temporarily change tracks in my brain so it's not full-speed-ahead and ready to derail from worrying about my cousin. "Are those things, uh, elemental-powered too?"

"You didn't know they were?" Aditya tries not to laugh as he comes into my view from the right, holding a slice of pizza. Vegetarian combo - tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.

"They don't have this kind of torch in the Second 'Verse yet," Yash says as he snacks on his own pizza slice.

"So, what, are you just harvesting more meteorite pieces?" Harris asks. "I mean, you can't exactly get that big-ass rock under a microscope."

"We're trying," says Jae. "But this big-ass rock is also resilient-ass."

"We're trying to get microscope-sized particles," says Park, "but every time we try, the light just..." He turns his back to us so we don't get too much of the light shining in our eyes as he activates the torch, taking it to the rock and making it spark. Two seconds later, he turns around, clutching a throwable lump of greenish stone in his rubber-gloved hand. "Try fitting this under a high-powered lens."

"Yeah, aren't those things so close to the tray that you might scrape shit lining it up?" Harris asks.

"Not the kind of microscopes I've seen them use around here," Fionna says, "but still, better to have a small enough piece to fit it comfortably."

"And the rock doesn't wanna break into those small enough pieces." Jae pulls his goggles up and massages his eyes. "But anyway...you were saying about TJ?"

"Yeah, we were gonna bring him down here like you said." I look up at the ceiling, as if expecting him to look down on us through a window that isn't even there. "But...but when we went into his apartment, he was gone."

"What did you want us to see?" Harris asks. "I mean, it sounded like you made some discovery, but from the looks of things, you haven't even managed to get a sample-"

"Oh, that." Jae claps his hands. "Well, it's not something we need to use the microscope for, but it's...well, it's pretty cool all the same. Here, Dom, why don't you show the boys?"

"Besides us," says Yash as he and Aditya down more pizza simultaneously.

Aditya gabbles away for a second with his mouth full before swallowing and saying, more clearly, "You're gonna love this, we promise."

"Stop hyping it up and show us already!" I yell.

"Patience," Jae says in an oddly paternal, Captain America-type tone. Then he takes the lump of stone from Park and turns his torch onto it. "You might wanna cover your eyes, everyone..." He waits until we've all done so, but even with my hands over my eyes, the light penetrates my skin and bone. It's like I've got my wings over my eyes, and the sun shining brightly through them. Or a campfire. I think back to that Halloween when I came to Balthazar's outdoor party, where Alex convinced me to show my wings in public for the first time since middle school. Another reason why people used to bully me back then - and I'd been so traumatized by that that I'd embraced being a typical demon the second I set foot in Hell, in Castledown.

"Done!" Jae announces. "See for yourself, mein froinds."

Harris and I both chuckle at his super-obscure Rush reference, but nobody else does. Then we all uncover our eyes and behold the space rock in his hand.

"Wait, wasn't that rock green before?" Harris asks.

I gasp when I realize his point. He's right, it was green, but not anymore. Now, aside from the crispy black fusion crust, it's a milky white. Like quartz, but still with quicksilver-looking splotchy flaws throughout.

"What'd you do?" I ask. "Did your elemental-"

"Yeah," Park says. "Apply enough light to this stuff and it changes to white."

"And..." Harlan raises his hand and picks up another stray lump of green, which he covers with dark energy for a full twenty seconds. Then he tosses the fully-black rock in the air. The fusion crust is still discernible - no silver spots in that part - but other than that it looks totally different. No longer green - which, now I think about it, is the same shade of green as one of these old Hot Wheels-type cars Alex and I used to play with as kids. An 80s-era Ford Aerostar van, forest green, but made with heat-sensitive paint that became lime green at the touch of our hands.

"Okay," I say. "So you have a special color-changing rock. What good does that do us?"

"Nothing yet," says Jae. "It was just a little bit of fun we figured out. There must be a purpose to it all, but we don't know what it is...whoa, wait, what was that?" He almost drops the white stone when he shines his light through it and it starts to project what looks like a pale blue hologram into the air. But only for a second.

"Holy shit!" Park seizes the darked-up rock from Harlan's hand and shines his own light through it, creating a similar holographic-type projection. It doesn't resolve into any specific shape, though - just a storm of deep blue visual static extending a foot or so into the air. "And we found this one by accident too?"

"Seems that way," says Kensi. "Here, let me try!" She holds out her hand until Park gives her the rock, and she shines her own light through it - but the longer she shines it, the more the snowy image coalesces into something discernible.

Her own face, and then the rest of her body.

"Whoa." Kensi stares into the heart of her holo-self as she displays some kind of walk cycle, her head hanging down the whole time.

"Fascinating," says Yash. "But you guys, you need to-"

"Here, here, try this one!" Harris points to the black rock Park still has in his hand. Park tries again until he manages to form a hologram of his own self, only his isn't walking. Instead, he looks like he's flying through the air until he collides with something solid and slides down, hitting the ground lifelessly.

Aditya chuckles, as does Jae, but nobody else does. Because those of us watching this particular hologram recognize it immediately.

"That was the day when-" I begin.

"When Penner kicked my ass and took my name, yeah." Park shudders, actually dropping the rock in the process. Harris lunges forward to grab it, but without any light from Park's hand - or anyone else's, for that matter - to shine through it, there's no more hologram. "I'm still not sure how the hell I survived that."

"A bloody miracle, that's how," I say.

Fionna snaps her fingers. "Wait a second, I just realized something...the black rock, when we shine light through it, it shows us the past. Isn't that pretty much what the Black Mirror did?"

I gasp. "You don't think...?" But she's on to something, and we all know it.

Harris' eyes widen as he stares into the black rock's depths. "Well...yeah. I mean, we all thought the Black Mirror was some kind of enchanted obsidian, right?"

Park scoffs. "That's what Dana Jackson kept saying. But..." He reaches for his phone. "If I could only call her, but that'd alert Peppermint for sure."

"Wait, she's alive?" Kensi asks.

Fionna nods. "I thought Peppermint killed her with that missile strike!"

"They blew up her little hydropower plant," says Park. "But she survived, 'cause of course she's got more lives than a barrel of cats-"

"The Mirror's not made of obsidian," Harris pipes up.

"No." I shake my head in disbelief. "You think it's made of these meteorites?"

"It's possible..." Jae muses. "The cosmos don't care what universe you're in. Every planet flies a little orbit around its star, and every planet has to deal with these kinds of celestial birdstrikes sooner or later."

Yash clears his throat. "Sorry to interrupt the astro-geekery," he says, "but Aditya and I, we came here to talk about...well, we figured out a little something with that mind-control virus on TJ Grant's phone."

"You don't need to say his full name," Aditya tells him. "It's not like we know a ton of TJs. Or Grants, besides Gustin, that is."

I turn my full attention to the Patels. "What's the news?"

"Well, we've got the phone in another room..." Yash gestures through the wall behind him. "But, uh, we got it to do something a little different. It's tracking TJ himself."

I run to the door. "Show us!"

The Patels lead us - more accurately, me and Harris - to their computer lab, a couple of Terminal doors away from the Parks' lab. Inside, TJ's phone sits in a Plexiglas box, accessible only through these big old rubber gloves that allow people to touch it without catching its onboard cyber-contagion.

I stick my hands in those gloves and handle the phone myself, turning it so Harris and I can see the screen. A blinking green dot shines on a map of white streets on a black background, tangled like spilled spaghetti. But only on the upper half of the screen. The lower half looks a little emptier, aside from a single road trailing down. The whole thing looks less like spaghetti and more like an upside down diagram of a tree trunk and roots.

"Where is this?" I ask.

"Zoom out and find out," says Aditya.

"Yeah, I'm not recognizing this either," says Yash. "Last I saw, though, he was flying over the East Bay somewhere..."

I pinch the screen, allowing the map to zoom out. One pinch, two pinch, three...then I start to recognize the layout of streets.

"He's in Bearville?" I ask in disbelief.

"He flew all the way there?" Harris asks, similarly incredulous.

I turn around and see Yash and Aditya's brown faces turning pretty ashen. "What's wrong?" I ask them.

Yash stutters a couple of times before finally finding his voice. "It's not just that he's in Bearville. You know who else is there alongside him."

I swallow. "Penner."

Yash nods gravely. "Looks like Penner's summoned your cousin to spring him."