Matt staggered out of the room, holding Daniel's satchel in one hand and using the other to lean on the wall for support. A bright red stain spread across his abdomen. "This is a first," he quipped. John reached for him but Matt shrugged him off. "I'm okay; it's just a scratch," he assured John before turning his attention to the rest of his team. "Daniel, get that key!" he warned as Cathleen secured Art's hands behind his back.

Daniel and Cathleen secured their prisoner and forced him to walk forward. John glanced at the two school employees. He knew they would be traumatized if they saw the jump. "Let's get to the roof. Our ride can pick us up there." John hoped the school employees would assume he meant a helicopter.

Taking John's hint, everyone offered sincere thanks and handshakes to the resource officer and the custodian before the resource officer showed them to the roof. As they walked, Daniel retrieved the satchel from Matt's shoulder.

John felt Daniel slip something into his hand and realized it was a strip of nanites. He applied it to his neck, grateful for the familiar burn that assured him the nanites were active. As soon as the resource officer had locked the roof access behind the team, the world blurred around John briefly.

Knowing his friend was hurt more than he'd let on, John focused on Matt instead of the jump. Matt staggered and would have fallen if John hadn't caught him, even before the jump ended. Leaning heavily on John, Matt grinned. "You're really getting the hang of jumping, John. Too bad you have to go home; you'd have made a fantastic agent."

Behind them, John heard Daniel's voice, ordering a medical evacuation for Matt and transportation for the rest of them. "I wish I could stay, too," John admitted. He sighed, already feeling the grief of loss. "It hurts to know I have to wait until Heaven to see you again, Matt. You're a good friend, especially with as often as you've saved my hide in the last week." The two friends shared a grin before a drone landed on the roof.

"That's my ride," Matt quipped. "Give me a hand, will you?" John nodded, and helped Daniel ease his friend into the drone. When Matt was strapped into the transport pod, he grabbed John's hand before Daniel could close the domed, glass lid over him. "Have a blessed life, John. I'm glad you're finally safe."

John almost lost control of tears he hadn't realized he was holding. "You too!" he choked as Daniel secured the lid and pressed a button on the side of the drone. John watched it rise straight into the air before it zipped toward Lima and medical attention. It was gone in barely a minute.

John turned around to see Art's expression before Daniel and Cathleen pulled him away. Regret and fear flickered in his expression as he looked in the direction that the drone had taken. Despite everything, Art still cared about his former friend. It gave John hope that he didn't express, as a helicopter arrived to ferry everyone to the DTD building in Lima.

Uniformed officers met the helicopter when it landed. They slapped a nanite strip on Art's neck, perilously near his burn, and hauled him away. "Those are interdiction nanites," Cathleen explained as Art was placed into a patrol car. "They work like the walls of a P-wing. Even if someone gives him nanites for a jump he won't be leaving this natural timeline ever again."

John nodded, reassured that Art wouldn't ever be back to threaten him. He didn't answer though. All he wanted to do was go to the hospital for word of Matt. "Can you call the hospital?" he asked instead.

As a kernel of fear for his friend grew in John's chest, Daniel put a reassuring hand on John's shoulder. "He'll be riding a desk for a standard six months, but he'll live; don't worry, John. Matt is in the best of care." Daniel grinned and winked at his wife.

"If I had my way, he'd be riding that desk permanently," Cathleen growled. "Taking chances like that!" John realized that she'd grown as fond of her superior as she had John, had taken a maternal stance toward the younger agent. For some reason, that thought comforted John like nothing else could. With Daniel and Cathleen watching over Matt, they would be okay. John was sure of it.

Clay met the trio in the office. "The powers that be want John home, now. Change is spreading, rapidly." He continued relentlessly, oblivious to the emotional storm raging in John's heart. "John, one more jump and you'll be back in your bed, about ten minutes after you left it. I have the room set up already."

John had no choice but to leave his backpack there in the office and follow Clay into a sedan waiting in the garage for him. He accepted the candy Daniel handed him before the older man wrapped strong arms around John. "You'll be fine," Daniel whispered.

Cathleen joined the hug. "We'll see you again, one day. Go with God; He's already with you."

John hugged them both back, trying to contain the tears that had threatened to escape since he'd bid Matt 'goodbye'. Why does it have to be this way?

It's only temporary, I promise. Soon, you will all be with Me. Only be strong in Me, using the strength of My might.

Okay. God, I'm sorry; I want Your will for my life; nothing more, nothing less, nothing else, like that missionary said. It's just hard to lose these friends You let me meet. "I'll see you soon," John told Daniel and Cathleen aloud as he let them go.

Cathleen offered him a wobbly smile. "Here, there, or in the air, right?" she quipped as John climbed into the passenger's seat of the sedan.

John grinned, despite himself. "It won't be here, so I'll see you in the air or in Heaven."

"Be blessed!" Daniel added as his wife shut the door. They waved at John as Clay eased the sedan out of the garage. John waved back until he couldn't see them anymore.

Soon, John was dressed in a new pair of 'tidy whiteys' and tucked into a cot set up exactly where his futon had stood. Clay spoke up before he blurred away. "I put a sleep-aid in your taffy, John. I know you're exhausted, so after the jump, you'll sleep until morning." John thanked him and closed his eyes as Clay disappeared.

The insistent buzz of John's alarm clock app woke him up on the second try. Blearily, John sat up and acknowledged the app in order to make the noise stop. Already ten minutes later than he wanted to be, John opened his notebook by force of habit and tried to focus on his homework. He struggled with it, feeling as if he hadn't seen the material in a week.

Vague images of Matt, Daniel, Cathleen and Art floated in the back of John's half-awake brain as his body fought to rid itself of the 'sleep aid' he'd been given. Frustrated, he scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Man, was that ever a crazy dream!" he exclaimed. John stretched the kinks out of his back and it 'popped' the way it did every morning, bringing a vague sense of relief when it did. "Ah, that's better; back to electronic braking systems!" Speaking aloud helped him to wake up better.

With his thoughts focused fully on school at last, John ploughed through his homework and got ready for class. In the shower, John noticed his wrist. The grease burn he'd gotten at work seemed to be healing far faster than usual, he thought.

In class that day, one of John's classmates acted vastly different from how John expected him to. Instead of a truculent attitude and excuses for every mistake, the student was interested and engaged in the class. He asked questions and even seemed to know the material! John couldn't help but stare at the guy several times during the six-hourlong class session as more changes became apparent. His name was no longer 'Baby Boy Doe', but Gene Gerlack. Instead of bitter references to foster care or sarcastic cracks about 'Daddy Ohio', he spoke of a family with great affection.

During the last fifteen-minute break of the class, Gene approached John in the parking lot. He'd acted through all of class as if the two were friends and seemed acquainted with John's life, so John went with it, feeling as if the whole day were a surreal experience. "Cavill, you okay, Man?" Gene asked quietly, trying not to draw attention to the question. "What up witchoo today? We been lab partners all session, but you actin' like you never seen me afore! You mad at me for somethin'?"

John swallowed and dropped backward to lean against the building as events from his past week flooded into mind. It hadn't been a dream! "Sorry B . . . uh, Gene. I had a long night last night." Given that the 'night' had been a week long, John's answer was no exaggeration.

"Hey, look Man, it's been a long week getting ready for that exam this morning; that was brutal! You oughta' come hang at my house tomorrow. We kin play some games and you kin have a real meal for once. My momma's a good cook."

John blinked. "I thought you lived in the dorms?"

Gene laughed out loud. "Nah, Man! I live with my folks and my grandpa on the Elida road, out by the library. Anyway, I wouldn't be passing this class without all the help you give me this session. After that test, I owe you, Man!"

John didn't know what to say. "Well, I gotta get to work at seven, but I can hang until then. Thanks!" was what came out of his mouth. There was a vague realization in the back of his mind that God had taken over in that moment. Gratitude he didn't put words to filled him. He went back to class with a piece of paper ripped from Gene's assignment pad in his pocket, scribbled with Gene's address.

To his relief, work that night held no new surprises for John but after he'd caught up with his laundry the following morning, there was one more surprise waiting at Gene's house. After John rang the doorbell, the door was opened by someone with a very familiar, albeit far older, face.

"Reggie!" John burst out. Mortified, he closed his mouth with a snap. "Uh, um, Gene . . ."

Reggie stepped outside and went to sit on the porch swing, leaving his cane to lean against the porch rail. "Gene's upstairs, John, but set a spell, first. I got a confession to make."

"Um . . . okay?" John obeyed the elderly man and perched on the other side of the swing.

"When I first met you, I told you I hadn't seen you arrive the night before but truth is, I was taking a leak, and I saw you and another guy just, like, appear in my jail cell. I was scared, Man! You was on the bed, sleeping, but that guy was talking to you, telling you all about how he was sorry to pull you back in time and kill you but 2020 was never gonna miss you and all this other stuff about why he hadda' kill you. I knew I couldn't let that happen, so about the time he put my pillow over your face, I stepped in. He disappeared just like y'all come. I saw you disappear the next night too, and I figured out a lot over the years since then. You changed my life that day; thank you."

Thank You, Lord!

I told you so! John could feel the Heavenly grin in his Father's still, small voice.

"I didn't do as much as you might think, Reggie," John told the older man as he remembered what Matt had said about him.

"I was a stranger, but you treated me like a friend and you cared," Reggie countered.

A fragment of a verse flashed in the back of John's mind. He recognized it, but couldn't remember where it was. John vowed to look it up, 'later'. 'Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for Me.'

"I'm glad Gene found you," Reggie continued. "If you ever wanna talk about what happened to you, I'll believe you."

A rush of gratitude he didn't express to his Lord filled John as he opened his mouth and began to speak about things that no one else in the entire world would have understood or believed.