***HARRIS***

When Evan closes the front door behind her, there's no place for the sound of the massive turbines on either side of us to go. So it fills the confined space around us, rattling inside my skull - and, no doubt, everyone else's too.

"Where do we go from here?" I yell over the noise. "Where's Jay? Where's Adele?"

"Jeez, did you expect Elena to greet us at the front door?" Michelle rolls her eyes at her own question.

"She usually does, doesn't she?" Kevin asks.

"Yeah, 'cause like all evil bad-guy villains, she can't resist being front and center!" Evan says.

My phone rings, and while I resist the urge to answer it for a while, I know it has to be Elena when I check the screen and see it saying "Unknown Caller." I slide my thumb across the bottom and hold the phone tightly to my ear, bellowing, "WHAT NOW?"

"I thought I'd lost my connection with Evan," Elena says, "so I just tried calling you in case your phone had better reception."

"It's nothing to do with reception," Evan says. "I hung up on you. No playing around, Elena."

"I don't appreciate your attitude."

I scoff at the camera oh-so-conspicuously perched above the elevator door at the far end of the room. "We're teenagers," I say. "It's what we do."

"That 'we' doesn't include Jeremy, does it?" Elena asks.

I drop the pitch of my voice. "You know what I mean. Stop delaying us."

"If you would stop long enough to listen," Elena says silkily, "I could give you the instructions. Trusting you to follow them, though...that would be another story."

I tighten my grip on my phone. "You're not helping with these goddamn games."

"I'm not quite done supervising the installation of Jason's cast," says Elena.

Somewhere in the background, I hear what can only be Jay screaming. It sounds like he's saying "Don't touch me!" I could be wrong, but I'm not. No, I'm not. (Wait, that's an Eagles song. Why are lyrics coming to mind all of a sudden?)

"'Cast?'" I repeat before remembering how Evan said the zombie warlocks broke Jay's arm before. And then I remember Elena mentioned it herself at some point. "Really? You think that makes up for anything, you treating him-"

"Like I told you before, I needed someone to test my latest product on anyway," says Elena. "Nothing like what you must think, though," she adds hastily. "Just a nanotech-infused cast. It'll help him heal faster, and you'll be happy to know he's not the first human test subject." She clears her throat, then says, "Take the elevator down to the third basement level. Adele's there, and Jay will follow when he's done."

"How 'bout we just wait until they're both ready to go?" asks Evan. "We get them both back, or none at all."

"A bold statement," Elena says. "Hope you have the guts to back it up. Third basement level, remember? We'll be waiting."

As if on cue, the elevator opens right when Elena hangs up. Three people emerge, all with shuffling walks and scary, pasty grayish faces. Evan wasn't kidding when she described Elena's newfound slaves as "zombies." She and Adele and the Cross brothers must be in for some major-league nightmares at this point, especially given that they had to face these guys in full-on fight mode. Now, on the other hand, they're inert and non-threatening. I'm just waiting for that to change.

Michelle appears to be thinking along the same lines as me. The first chance she gets, she walks right up to the nearest zombie-warlock and waves a flaming hand in his face. He doesn't react at all, not even blinking.

Aimee then tries to lift another zombie-warlock's arm. As soon as he lets go, the arm just flops down, hanging loosely at the man's side. She backs away, a look of pure revulsion on her face.

To my side, Jeremy tugs at my arm. I look down at him, and he says in a voice higher and tighter than the military haircuts in my dad's old photos of him and his buddies, "This is fucking scary, man!"

"I know, I know..." Unsure what else to do, I pat his head gently. Jay would hug him if he were here, but I don't think Jeremy trusts me that much. He doesn't quite see me as a friend and brother the way Jay does, I don't think. "Come on," I say, steering him towards the elevator. "Let's go. Let's get our friends back."

Before getting into the elevator, I locate Aimee and take her hand, squeezing it tightly for a second or two. She squeezes back, whispering, "Thanks."

"I think I needed it more than you did," I say with a light laugh.

We're all crammed into the elevator for what feels like an eternity. Then, when we reach the third basement level, the doors open to show a room in which Adele sits on a chair, surrounded by zombie-warlocks who all have their backs turned to her. They're all tall and strong-looking men and women. Immobile, until Adele looks up and pushes past them as she spots us coming in.

While Adele and Evan embrace, I watch the zombies. Two of them, in particular, got knocked down when Adele saw us. They didn't quite hit the floor, though. They came close, but now they're freakishly suspended, in a sort of crouch with their arms extended to break their falls. That comes to an end when they rise back to their feet in a way that looks completely, absolutely unnatural. It's not the way I would get back up if I were to fall. Instead, it looks like...well, it can only be described as what it would look like if a clip of their fall were to be played in reverse.

We know why Elena's doing this - she's a mad scientist who's gone to the dark side, that's why. But how? That's the real mystery. And I'm not sure I want to know the answer. But find out we should, if you'll excuse my latest little lapse into the Yodanese dialect.

So...what's the secret, Elena? What have you slipped into these zombies' morning tea to make them this way? And if you can answer this question despite it never leaving my head, let me know and I'll be sure to invest in a tinfoil hat or seven. (If I need them that badly, I should have one for each day of the week. I'll even color-code them with strips of fluorescent duct tape, the strangely smelly kind Jay and Evan's English teacher put on beat-up old copies of Death of a Salesman earlier this year.)

I again try to engage the zombies. Foolishly, I know, but it can't hurt to see what may or may not set them off. "Yoo-hoo!" I dance around in front of them, looking like a complete and utter idiot. "Hey walkers! Sorry about your mama - she was begging me to put that crossbow bolt into her head!"

Maybe they'd be more likely to react if I were to make a less Walking Dead-referential joke, but still, the complete lack of even a muscle twitch among the zombie-warlocks is unnerving me more than ever. "Come on, guys," I say, hating how much I sound like I'm pleading. "Wake up and smell the carnivorous roses!" Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. ¿Porqué?

"Harris, just stop." Aimee pulls me back, away from the zombies. "It's no use."

"She's right." Elena emerges from a door next to the elevator. "They only listen to me. Soldiers, at ease."

In near-perfect unison (I think one of them is a half-second behind the others - Elena will probably kill him first for being out of sync), the zombies stand straight, holding their hands behind their backs.

"And now," Elena says, "your comrade-in-arms." She stands aside, and Jay appears out of the shadows. He looks pale, he's got several cuts on his face, and his arm is covered in a white cast with thin black stripes in the plaster. It wouldn't be one of Elena's products without the stripes - clearly that's one of her trademarks. I'm thinking this time, it's less from spun steel and more from whatever nanotech she put into it. Either way, she's given Jay something diabolically indestructible, and I, for one, would love to see it come off. Although that would leave his broken arm unbound and possibly un-set, so that's also for no.

"The cast comes off in one week," Elena says. "At that time, the nanites will lose charge, and their work will have been done. Then you can have the cast removed. Oh, and even better - in addition to repairing your bones, the nanites will stimulate the muscles in your arm and prevent them from atrophying."

"Good to know," Jay says through clenched teeth. "But it wouldn't have been nicer to, I dunno, not damage my body? It's the only one I've got!"

Elena laughs lightly, but otherwise ignores him.

Jeremy and Evan are the first to approach Jay, but they're not sure whether or not they should hug him. Certainly not both at once, coming at him from the left and the right. The resulting embraces - one after the other - end up awkward because Jay can only use one arm for each of them.

"Goodbye, then," Elena says with tons of false, saccharine cheer. She turns and goes back through the door. "You know the way out."

"And don't let the door hit us where the Lord split us?" I ask.

Elena swivels around long enough to say, "Don't test me." Then she closes the door and leaves us for good.

We pile into the elevator as soon as it opens, and Jay says, "The sooner we get this thing the fuck off of me, the bet-AAAAAAHHH!"

"What? What is it?" We all ask variations on those questions, clamoring all at once.

"Nothing, nothing," Jay groans. He leans back against the wall, clutching his arm and tightening his lips. "I...I must've bumped into someone, is all. This still hurts like a bitch."

"Whichever one of you did it," I say, glaring at the rest of the group, "own up before I kick your ass!"

"I did it," Evan says meekly.

I raise my eyebrows. "You're still getting an ass-kicking next time we fight, okay?" Jay slumps a little bit, and then I say, "Yeah, uncalled for. Sorry, dude."

He glares at me for a second - and I notice that he's slouching so much that our eyes are now level. "Yeah," he says. "Thanks for threatening my girlfriend. And reminding me that I can't fight next Friday. Not with this."

"You sure you still want it off?" asks Kevin. "The way Elena made it sound...only a week? That's pretty sweet, I think."

"Need we remind you who designed that cast?" Michelle asks, cuffing Kevin on the back of his head.

The elevator moves upward at an agonizingly slow speed. Once we're up top again, we run through the noisy room and out onto the street, where Michelle goes to the curb and starts searching for cabs to hail. Unfortunately, there aren't any to be had, so the rest of us just stand around on the sidewalk, waiting impatiently. For some reason, we find ourselves grouped by gender - the girls to one side, the guys to the other. Either way, we're all gathered around one of the people Elena just released to us. They're still pretty shaken about all this - especially Jay.

"You'll be okay, buddy." I lay my arm over his shoulders. He winces - my touch jostles him enough that it must send more of those god-awful white-hot pins and needles through his arm - but he grits his teeth, powering through it so he doesn't cry out like before. "Hey," I say, "you don't gotta be strong for us."

"I should be," Jay says in a soft whisper. I have to lean closer to hear him talk. "I should've done a better job protecting you." He looks at Jeremy, blinking rapidly. "I-"

"Don't say it." Jeremy tilts his head up so he can look Jay in the eye. "You can't protect me all the time. And since I got off easy, I'd say you need it more than I do."

He smiles sheepishly. "Yeah, as you can see, I'm a bad, bad hero. Maybe I should be less Scott and more Stiles."

"You're already more Stiles," I say. "And not just 'cause you look like him."

Jay pretends to headbutt me. "Uh-huh. Right. And Kevin here looks like a blond Jackson."

"I'm still working on getting a six-pack like that guy's," Kevin laughs.

"Hey, guys!" Michelle calls us from down the street, where she's finally gotten us a taxi. "This guy can take two more passengers. Jay, Jeremy?"

The brothers turn her way, and Jay shrugs and says, "Guess that's our cue to leave. You guys sure you don't mind staying here?"

"Yeah, no problem," I say. "We'll all be back in Spellman in a couple of hours. And, uh, good luck getting that cast off, huh?"

"Thanks, dude."

A few seconds later, Jay and Jeremy get into this new taxi, along with Evan and Adele. The rest of us don't have too long to wait, at least. Unbelievably, Morgan, of all people, shows up less than five minutes after that taxi takes off.

"What'd I miss?" he laughs as we climb into his car, a first-gen Ford Escape. Red, of course, like his hair and his Fire. "No offense, but you all look like a dog's breakfast."

"You should see the other guys," I say. "'The other guys' being Jay and Jeremy and Evan and Adele."

Morgan gets back into traffic. "Oh, that bad?"

"You'll see when you get us back to Spellman," says Michelle. She clenches her fist, allowing a few sparks to fly off her hand, then leans back in her seat. "That Elena...we're gonna need to really figure out a way to beat her."

"Why, what'd she do now?"

"Long story," says Aimee.

"Long and painful," I say.

Morgan turns us around, driving us south past Ocean Beach. "Anything I can do to help?" he asks. "Seriously, I'd love to-"

"We'll figure it out," I say. "But later, okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure." He reaches over to the radio to change the station - it's just started playing one of Sia's electronic drinking songs, so instead he has us listen to some good old Kongos. That takes our mind off things for a while, but it doesn't last forever. I spend the rest of the ride staring into the depths of Fox Mulder's eyes, printed on Jay's hoodie. He'd left it behind, as he couldn't wear it anymore with the cast on his arm, and I decided to take it upon myself to get it back. Right now, though, it serves as a reminder of everything that's gone wrong today.

We really do need to make a better plan against Elena. The sooner we can get back to a normal teenage life, the better.