Pete is told to pack his essentials into a bag and follow Andy. His voice is hoarse from all the shouting, his brain blurred from all the various near-panic attacks he's been hit with over the past week. He can't believe he ever mistook this for heaven; if anything, it's some strange circle of hell, the relentless questioning, the rigid schedule, the pre-digested mess they like to call food. The scars that keep appearing on Patrick's body.

But now he's had enough. He won't tolerate this anymore. Besides, he's already given White everything. She has every detail of their relationship, the kisses they've exchanged, their intimacies, the way Patrick's eyes roll back as he comes, the way his body relaxes against Pete's when they're together. It feels like a betrayal. He tells himself he had no choice, ignores the lack of persuasion it took for him to spill everything. Besides, now she has video evidence.

He hates her. He hates this place, he hates that he doesn't know where he is and no-one will tell him. Even Patrick, who fucking lives here, for goodness' sake, doesn't seem to know. Andy better be leading him to some damn answers.

The door to Patrick's room stands out from the rest – it's steel, flanked with deadbolts – and Pete averts his eyes. This isn't about the boy, no matter how much Pete wonders whether he's in there, cowering from Pete like he was not so long ago. Pete won't let himself feel guilty; this is as much Patrick's fault as it is anyone else's.

When Andy stops in front of a large door, Pete thinks this must be it: the famous briefing. Andy scans some sort of ID, punches in a code, scans each of his finger prints, looks into what must be a retinal scanner, then finally opens the door, beckoning Pete through, leading him down yet another corridor, does the same at yet another door. It's all becoming a little too Mission: Impossible for Pete.

They reach what is clearly a cloak room, and it messes with Pete's head a little, especially when Andy shrugs off his white coat and shoves a sweater over his head, grabbing a bag and a phone from a locker, staring at the screen for a few seconds before finally glancing up at Pete and gesturing to his soft clothes and bare feet. "You might want to put some shoes on."

Pete does, quickly, changing his trousers too, grateful for Andy's averted gaze. "Where are we going?" he asks as he stands, glancing towards yet another very secure-looking door.

"You want to know what's going on," Andy shrugs, swiping his key card in the lock, "I'm showing you."

"O-okay," Pete nods, even though he thought this would be more of a tell than a show. He follows Andy through the door, immediately noticing the lack of silence around him; there's chatter seeping through the walls, the sound of footsteps echoing from far-away corridors and from his own feet as they hurry down several flights of stairs.

"Peter Wentz and Andrew Hurley, checking out," Andy says to a woman Pete's never seen before, sitting behind a glass screen. Andy shows his ID, then gestures to Pete, "he's only just got clearance, but he should still show on the system."

The woman, who looks remarkably like a cottage loaf, stares at Pete for a few seconds, before tapping away at her computer and nodding slightly. "Yes, he's fine. Oh, these are yours, I think," she adds, holding a clear bag of items out to Pete. Pete's heart lifts when he sees his phone, his beloved phone, his keys, and his wallet, and he snatches the bag from her with mumbled thanks. "Have a good weekend, Andy," she smiles, and he grins at her, poking out his tongue. It's the most normal thing Pete's seen Andy do.

Nevertheless, the man strides on, greeting several others as he walks. They turn a corner and head towards a set of double doors flanked with armed guards. Neither of them looks particularly friendly.

"Have you figured it out yet?" Andy sighs at Pete as they approach the doors.

"Uh," Pete falters, clutching his bags tighter in his hands. He has an inkling, but it's uncertain and he doesn't want to be wrong. For all he knows, the doors could lead to God's private estates.

"Come on, lawyer, isn't it obvious?" Andy nods at the guards and they return the gesture. Then he scans his ID one last time, and the door buzzes loudly, clicking open. When Andy pushes through, Pete feels a rush of cold air stream past him, and stone under his feet. When he looks around at the world he's stepped into, he can hardly believe his eyes.

"This is -" Pete starts, letting the doors shut behind him as he feels the wind on his face and hears the swoop of traffic in his ears. "This is London."

Andy stops to look at him, dull eyes unwavering. "Yes."

"But – but," Pete stammers, twisting around to look up at the building they've just emerged from. "This isn't – that's not -"

"No, that's not heaven," Andy sighs. "That is the core research laboratory of the Natural History Museum."

Everything inside Pete seems to drop a hundred feet yet fall perfectly into place at the same time. "We've been here – London – Earth – this whole time?" The city glows under the darkening clouds, the chill of November seeping into Pete's fingertips, the rustle of autumn leaves whispering in his ears.

"Yes – walk, Pete," Andy huffs impatiently, gesturing towards the curved driveway in front of them and the busy road beyond. "I'll explain once you have a drink in your hand."

"Wait – did you say laboratory? Wha – is Patrick – Patrick's not a fucking angel, is he, he's a – a genetically modified – freak!" Pete cries, anger rising inside him that he's been tricked like this, duped into – ugh, into kissing some test-tube monster, some abomination of nature. Bile rises in the back of his throat.

Andy simply rolls his eyes. "No, Pete, he is. I'll explain in a moment."

"What the hell does that mean? You're bloody human, you always have been and you still think you can bloody lord it over me and – bloody, use me, for your damn videos, you were all the law doesn't apply to us but that's a damn joke, I can bloody sue you!" Pete nearly yells, tears springing to his eyes as he stares around at what definitely isn't heaven. Andy simply looks at him wearily, then turns and trudges away from the building like he's the one who's pissed about all this.

For a long few seconds, Pete thinks about running, about calling the police or simply curling into a ball and contemplating what the hell this all means, but his feet stumble after Andy instead.

-

"Okay," Pete huffs, scotch in hand and gaze firmly planted upon the man sitting opposite him in the back booth of whatever shady bar this is. He's ordered large, seeing as Andy's buying and it looks like it's going to be a long night. "Talk."

Andy takes a careful sip of lime and soda, and sets it down on the table with painful slowness. "Right. So. I don't know what Patrick's told you, but where we were wasn't -"

"-Heaven, yes, I know that. He kept telling me that, he just never said it was fucking earth." The lying bastard.

"He doesn't know, Pete."

"What?"

The man gives a strained smile, and sighs heavily. "He doesn't know where he is, he has no connection with the outside world, how should he know?"

Pete shakes his head as if it might help his whirring thoughts settle into place. "Wait – so, what the hell is he?" He can't get the image of a Frankenstein creature out of his head, the flash of lighting bringing Patrick to life.

"Unfortunately, he's exactly what you think he is. He's an angel. Have you heard of interdimensional physics?"

"What – no, go back to Patrick, how did he get here?" Pete bristles, brow furrowed.

"I'm getting to that. Interdimensional physics is -"

"Who the hell are you? Are you an angel too? What the fuck is going on?"

Andy's eyes flash with annoyance, and he takes another long draught of his drink. "This isn't going to work if you don't let me speak, Wentz."

Glaring, Pete shrugs, slumping against the wall. "Fine. Explain."

"Okay. Alright." Andy seems so calm, completely unaware that the longer he stalls, the closer he gets to a black eye. "So, a very long time ago, I was a student. Biochemistry at Oxford, I was good, too, top of my year," he muses, and Pete fails to hold back an eye-roll.

Andy just frowns and carries on. "Anyway, I was lucky enough to be selected for a placement year in the industry; and not just any industry. I was told it was confidential to the public, that I could not pass on any information, that I was there to watch, and only watch. I agreed, of course."

"Watch what?" Pete grunts, wondering what the hell this has to do with anything apart from the nursing of Andy's ego.

The man simply sighs. "I didn't know. I don't think anyone really knew what they were going to be seeing - even those closely involved. You see, since the development of nuclear technology, physicists have been studying the effects of such weapons on the atmosphere and environment and so forth, and - I'm no physicist, but I believe they found some sort of - disturbance - in - in, well. In not just the earth and the air but in the continuum itself."

Pete watches as Andy sits back as if in reverence, mind buzzing with confusion. "In English, please," he huffs, hating Andy for making him feel stupid. He hasn't felt like this since secondary school science lessons.

"Well, if Einstein described space and time as a fabric, then what the nuclear impacts had done was rip a hole in it. And, as it turned out, there was another layer of fabric underneath. A different - a different world."

Pete raises his eyebrows. "Right," he nods, deciding to finish his drink and walk out of there if Andy keeps spouting bullshit.

"If you're not going to believe me, we might as well go home," Andy tuts, eyes dull behind his glasses.

"Okay, yes, different world, carry on," Pete sighs, watching the ice in his drink float in a steady circle.

"Anyway, the research conducted showed that this other dimension might have similar conditions to that of Earth - and signs of life, too. But they wanted to know more, as they always do. They used a controlled explosion to create a sort of - pathway - into this place. They sent in endless robots, drones, probes, none came back, but none found anything hostile, either. . So they sent in soldiers. Not scientists, not astronauts, soldiers. I'd like to say I knew it was wrong from the start, but in all honesty, the privilege of watching the live footage alongside so many of the world's greatest scientific minds was enough to keep me quiet."

"What did they do," Pete says, trying to remain emotionless but aware of the worry creeping into his voice. "What was the place?"

"They haven't given it an official name, yet. It's been dubbed a lot of things - Utopia, Other Earth, Nirvana and so forth. The landscape was habitable, beautiful, it was like glass and greenery combined, the city was like nothing I'd ever - but, yes, they went in there and found a civilisation. In fact, the pathway seemed to have destroyed rather a large chunk of their civilisation, and they didn't take too kindly to the arrival of soldiers. This was, of course -"

"Who's they?" Pete interrupts, despite the lurking feeling that he knows already.

"The angels. Or, the winged humanoids, as they were called. Some ran, some advanced. This was obviously deemed as a hostile response, and the soldiers were given the go-ahead to open fire. Which, of course, they did. I don't know how many died."

Andy pauses for a moment to take a swig from his glass, then shakes his head slowly. "Once they'd cleared the area, they were told to gather a small number of samples and retreat. But - their heat sensors picked up another creature. They were hiding under shrapnel, as I recall, too scared to flee. It was a mother and child. They were found, and the mother was apparently showing signs of aggression, so they shot her in the head. And they were told to take the body, they should have taken the body. But they took the child, instead."

There's a sickness in Pete's chest as he contemplates where this might be going, but he says nothing. Andy's face is carved into a frown as he continues, his voice quiet and gravelly.

"It took weeks to stabilise the baby; its kind seemed to gain energy from the sun, their sun, and it didn't breathe like we do, eat like we do. But it evolved. The reports are fascinating. It actually changed its biological structure to fit its environment, it developed lungs and intestines and a heart, and once it was safe to transport, it - he came to us. Well, to White. She fought tooth and nail for her lab to be the one to raise the child - or, to conduct the investigation.

"I didn't know her at the time, of course, but at the end of my placement, I was offered a job at the lab. I'd hoped to be more involved in the Other world itself; but the original project in Arizona had been put on hold, due to lack of funds, and it'll be years still before we find a safer and less destructive pathway across dimensions. Anyway, I took the job. I wasn't supposed to be so involved, but they needed someone to do the dirty work. He was a baby, he still needed putting to sleep and feeding and changing, and it fell to me. Of course, there were others who cared for him, but I was the only one who stayed. And eighteen years later, I'm still here."

Pete can only stare as Andy sits back and exhales slowly. "So - so all this time...Patrick's been living in a lab? You - you took him from his family and you - you -"

"Please don't think that I orchestrated any of this. I'm simply doing my job," Andy says curtly, pursing his lips.

"I don't care if you bloody orchestrated this or not, he - he's a living thing, not some - some science project, I can't believe you'd - oh God," Pete finally sighs, running his fingers through his hair. This is so much worse than he'd imagined. "Those cuts...you've been slicing him up since he was a kid, haven't you?"

Andy nods. "We thought, if we raised him right, if we made the experiments a regular thing and punished him for any disobedience, that we could create the perfect specimen; passive and willing to let us do whatever we wanted to him."

A bitter laugh falls from Pete's mouth. "You fucking failed."

"Yes, we did," Andy smiles coldly, "as he got older, he became more intelligent, and I think he always knew something wasn't right. He saw right through us. We weren't expecting that."

"Good," Pete growls, and Andy's eyes flash with anger.

"But it doesn't help him! I've been trying to get that through his head for years, that if he'd just stop, stop being so damn difficult, then he wouldn't be so badly treated! He can lash out all he wants, but in the end, all it's going to get him is another wound. He can't win this fight, Pete, he proved that when he got himself caught," Andy snaps, slapping a hand down on the table.

A tense silence stretches out between them. Pete's mouth tries to find the best way to express the intense frustration building in his chest, but settles on satisfying his curiosities instead. "He said he escaped," Pete grunts, "when? How?"

"About six months ago," Andy says stiffly, finally retracting his hand and folding his arms. "I thought he was contemplating suicide when he told me he wanted to get out, but he was thinking more literally than that. Mind you, the things we'd been doing to him - I wouldn't have been surprised to find him with slits in his wrists. We -"

"Whoa, what the fuck?" Pete splutters, mind reeling over whether or not he just heard the man right. "What had you been doing?!"

Andy's eyes flick to Pete's, and Pete swears he sees the guilt right behind them. "Well - as, as he got older, the experiments became more - invasive. Plus, his body kept becoming immune to the tranquillisers - he would often wake up in the middle of - well. There was an incident, a slip up in a procedure to investigate his optic chiasma. It left him blind, and in an immense amount of pain for weeks. He recovered, thankfully, but I think he'd decided enough was enough. A month later, he was gone."

Pete stares for a second as he hears the atrocities fall from Andy's mouth so easily, but presses on. "How did he escape?"

Andy barks a laugh. "He made a pipe bomb."

"What?!"

"God knows how. We didn't teach him about chemicals - we didn't teach him anything that might lead to questions about his whereabouts, we wanted to raise him with minimal human influence - but he worked out what certain things did, and how he could use them. No-one knew anything about it until he blew a six foot hole in the wall. He'd calculated everything, you see; the timings of the patrols, the angles of the security cameras and where exactly they wouldn't see him. The only thing he underestimated was the force of the blast, I think. He was blown right through the wall. Fell two storeys."

"So...he thought he fell from heaven?" Pete says slowly, shock fading to realisation.

"It would seem so. Or, at least, that's what you've made him believe. We thought he'd be easy to catch - he was injured, badly, he's had a tracker in him since he could walk, and he's not exactly difficult to spot - but, my God, he ran. He dug the tracker out of his arm, too, but he didn't just drop it and run, oh no. He planted it on a boat; we chased it all the way to bloody Belgium before we realised it was no longer attached to him," Andy says, shaking his head. If Pete's not mistaken, there's a hint of pride in his words. "Then he met you, I suppose, and you know the rest."

Andy shrugs like this is nothing, like they're done talking and they can both go home now. Like he hasn't just confessed to the kidnap and torture of a child. Pete should be racking up the allegations by now, but all he can think about is Patrick. The boy who collected cats like they were jewels, the boy who walked into a lamppost because his eyes were fixed in awe upon the heavens. Pete finally understands. Patrick went eighteen years without ever seeing the sky.

"How the fuck could you do this," Pete growls, his voice crumbling with oncoming tears. "He's a kid."

"He's an animal, Pete," Andy says, and Pete has never hated him more. "He's dangerous."

"No he isn't!" Pete protests, "He's kind, and, and sweet and -"

"Yes, towards you. He thinks he's in love with you - he doesn't have the first idea what love is. But I've seen him break a man's arm, I've seen him beat the life out of an intern, I've seen him tear a doctor's chest right open. He understands hatred far too well."

"He's - he's killed people?" Pete says quietly, wondering what he'll do if the answer is yes.

"No," Andy says simply, "but I wouldn't put it past him. He's strong, Pete, he's stronger than we predicted, and he could do a lot of damage. We keep him suitably fit, of course, but he's - he could put his fist through your skull if he wanted to."

"Well, maybe if you stopped hurting him-"

"I'm not the one -"

"You bloody let it happen!" Pete cries, "You're as bad as White!"

"I can't leave, Pete. I'm all he has," Andy says softly, and fuck, he looks like he actually believes it.

"What," Pete says, choosing to take a swig of scotch over lunging across the table.

"I can't stop the experiments, or change the circumstances, but I try to make things better here and there. I ensure that they use the least painful procedures, or those that have the least uncomfortable after-effects. I made up stories to tell him at bedtime, I had special textbooks printed for him with no human context, I convinced White to allow a piano to be brought in. Without me, he has no one who is remotely on his side. I won't leave," he sighs, rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. "All things said, he's like a son to me."

Pete almost laughs at that, but he finds he doesn't have the capacity to do so. He just sits and stares, letting Andy buy him another drink because the burn of the alcohol gives him something other than the words to wince at.

"Pete," Andy says gently as he sits down, sliding the glass smoothly into Pete's hand, "please don't think I'm a tyrant. I know he's a thinking, feeling person, I know how astounding it is that he's even remotely sane at this stage. Hell, I know how intelligent he is, better than anyone -"

"I know he's clever," Pete spits, hating that Andy's tie to Patrick is eighteen years stronger than his own.

Andy shakes his head vigorously. "No, no, I don't mean he's simply clever. Of course he's clever, he hid from the British government for six months! No, I mean, well. He's very good at maths. Very good."

"I know," Pete insists, even if he doesn't, really. He always zoned out whenever Patrick talked maths.

"Pete, he won a Fields Medal."

"A what?"

Andy huffs as if Pete's stupidity positively exasperates him. "Essentially the equivalent of a Nobel Prize, in mathematics. He doesn't know it, of course. We took his proof and sold it to the highest bidder. It was an awful thing to do, really."

It's the most guilty Andy's looked all evening. Pete's blood reaches peak temperature.

"He doesn't know his own worth, you see," Andy sighs, " he's – I've had offers from Cambridge, Yale, MIT, I've shown experts his papers and they want him, they want to know who the anonymous genius is, and – and if his mind could be turned to applied maths, he could really – he could help humanity progress, in engineering, in, in space travel, you name it, he's just – he's wasted there. It's a travesty, it really is."

"That's sick, he'd be wasted even if he couldn't count to ten," Pete snarls. "How much of this does he know?"

"Oh, he's worked some of it out. I'm sure he must have realised that we're human by now. But that was why you were so useful - you could keep up the facade for us, not knowing where you were. We learned a lot about him from you. We've explored his sexual responses before, but to see him react to a genuine stimulant was utterly fascinating." The enthusiasm on Andy's face makes Pete's stomach turn.

"That was an outrageous invasion of our privacy," Pete states, remembering just how quickly such beautiful moments were spoiled forever. But then, it's hardly the worst thing they've done to Patrick.

"The footage won't be publicly shared, and when it is shown to others for research purposes, your face will be blurred. None of the information about yourself will be released - it's only Patrick we care about. Now that you've been briefed, you're decidedly less useful to us - but everything Wan said to you when you arrived still stands. We were very lucky you came into our hands; Patrick trusts you, and that's a rare thing. We want to work with you as much as possible." He says it like it's an actual, viable option.

"Piss off," Pete replies immediately, reading between the lines of Andy's honey-dipped words. "I'm not helping you."

"Well, then I suppose you're fired," Andy muses, sipping at his drink.

"What?!" Pete hisses, then realises what exactly Andy is doing. His options have been reduced to either helping them hurt Patrick, or never seeing Patrick again. "But if I leave -"

"We'll pay you for your trouble, we'll deliver your belongings and any paperwork, and we'll leave you alone," Andy finishes.

It's an enticing option. But. "He'll be devastated." I'll be devastated.

"Oh, you know Patrick. He'll probably fracture some knuckles over it, but he'll bounce back."

"What if I decide that I don't want to keep quiet about all this?" Pete challenges. He's sure he has some friends who specialise in whatever area of the law this falls into.

Andy just shakes his head. "You signed a binding non-disclosure agreement at the start of your employment. Break it, and we can make life very difficult for you - we have the British government behind us, plus every team of scientists privy to this project."

"What if I don't give a fuck?" Pete tries, his Patrick impression falling a little flat.

"I think you do, Mr. Wentz," Andy says coldly. "Plus, if you decide to interfere, your stupidity could have grave consequences for Patrick."

"Oh, fuck you," Pete cries, slamming a hand down on the table. He's not used to being out-gunned; and it's at the expense of someone so close to him.

Jamming the heels of his hands into his eyes, Pete lets the silence stretch out between them. He can feel Andy's fucking smirk burning a hole in his head, but there's nothing left that he can say, he won't go back, he can't, not now, not knowing the truth.

"I should have known you were human all along," Pete says bitterly, "only humans would do this."

Andy just nods slowly, knowing but not caring, acknowledging but not considering. Pete thinks of Patrick, locked in his room, with no idea that his life is all a lie. That somewhere in another fucking universe there's a father with no son. Pete's own mind is having trouble bending itself around all this. He always knew the kid was weird, but this. This is not what he expected to walk into. And, from the start, he's wanted nothing more than to get out. So that's exactly what he does.

"Okay," he blurts, downing the remainder of his drink, "I quit. I don't need all this shit." He's already fucking dying, for Christ's sake.

Andy smiles. "A wise decision, Mr. Wentz. Thank you for your services."

Pete stares at him for a few seconds, wondering how the hell he could have ever seen Andy as god-like. He's an insect, an infestation. Pete walks away.

-

"Pete?" his mother says when she opens the door to find the shivering shell of her son beneath the porch. "What's happened?"

There was only one place Pete wanted to go when he emerged from the bar, head spinning. He can't hold back anymore; he collapses into her arms and begins to sob. "I - Patrick, he - he's not - oh God, mum, you have to believe me, I can't - I - he -" His speech dissolves as she hugs him tight, bringing him into the house and shushing softly in his ear.

"It's okay, sweetie, I'll make you some tea and we can talk about this," she says, calm as always, and while Pete wants to forget everything to do with other worlds and sketchy science and angel boys, he also has to tell someone, someone who'll react like a human being.

As he finds himself on his mother's sofa with a cup of tea in his hands, he's never been more relieved to be on earth. He tells her everything. She believes every word. They both cry for Patrick.