***GABE***

"Slow down! You can't just..." Yash grabs my arm, the one with which I'm not currently tugging on Harris', in an effort to stop me from tearing out the door back to Second 'Verse Spellman. "Dude, don't go off all half-cocked! You're just gonna lose before you've even begun fighting!"

"Don't you see what's happening?" I gesticulate wildly at all the Terminal doors around us. "Penner's mind-fucked my cousin into being his slave!"

"'Slave' seems like kind of a strong word for this," Aditya says.

"I'd go with 'drudge' myself," Harris says. Everyone else, me included, looks at him funny. "What, no Z Brewer Minions around here? Gabe, I thought you for sure-"

I shake my head and let go of Harris' hand, then yank my other hand out of Yash's grip. "Penner got into my cousin's head. We need to help him. There's no time to waste making plans for this! Penner's already too many steps ahead of us!"

"I know, I know..." Yash paces on the spot. "Believe me, if I thought there were a way to take a shortcut in this race, I'd jump on it too. Nobody pisses me off more than brainwashers."

"Same here."

"But we can't just barge into that place and spring TJ before he springs Penner," says Yash. "What if Penner makes him kill himself? What if we get arrested ourselves? We need some kind of plan."

"Didn't we just say there's no time for plans?" Aditya points out.

"That's what I said." I copy Yash's pacing. We're practically circling each other like wolves, the two of us. "Can we..." I look around the Terminal, at all the doors, then another idea comes to mind. "One of these doors could get us there. Couldn't it?"

"To Bearville? Of course. It's just..." Yash scratches his head, looking very uncertain as he considers it. "Listen, you know Penner's locked up in prison, and it's supposed to be maximum security or some shit-"

"Some max security," Harris says, "if he can still do this kind of computer shit."

At her desk, Grace clears her throat. "This is why more people should've watched The Following in Prime." She then picks up her phone and dials a number.

"Who are you calling?" I walk up to her desk, my heart thudding right in my ears.

"A guy in Bearville. He might be able to help you."

Aditya whistles. "You have guys in Bearville? And everywhere else too, I bet."

"A girl doesn't kiss and tell." Grace winks, then holds the phone to her ear and covers the mouthpiece long enough to say, "Find the third green door, the one with the mountain symbol on it. Kinda looks like the Twin Peaks logo - oh, hi, Kaufman. Grace here. Listen, I've got a group coming into your place in Bearville. No, they're not gonna take Penner out of your care - in fact, they're gonna make sure someone else doesn't do it himself." She waves us onward, holding up three fingers on one hand to remind us of our goal.

"So that's the secret," I say as we follow the near-infinite Terminal hallway till we spot the door Grace told us about. "The symbols."

"And it's color-coded by 'verse and dimension," Aditya adds. "Or did you not notice?"

I look around, seeing all manner of doors in shades of red, blue, white, black, green, orange, etc. etc. "I kinda overlooked it, I guess."

"And it's based on distance from where you entered the Terminal in the first place," Yash says, ushering us through the green door into that familiar forest clearing outside the Bearville city limits. "Like, you guys came in through Spellman, so go a little further down the hall, you could've gone to Vegas or LA or Star City or someplace."

"I thought Star City was supposed to be San Francisco," Aditya says.

"You stopped watching Arrow years ago," Yash tells him. "Trust me, that place is as Pacific Northwest as it gets." I smile at him. He and I and Alex have the same headcanon.

Harris peers around the trees and snaps his fingers, beckoning us forward. "Wow," he says with a soft whistle. "This place is, like, unrecognizable."

"No more wall." Aditya nods approvingly.

"Well, it's not all gone yet." Yash points to the distant heights of the old wall still visible on the northern edge of town. "This is gonna take tons of time."

As we find our way to the road and head off into the city, it's just as strange to see no checkpoint ahead. Where the wall used to cross the road, it's been replaced with an austere archway. I think the architect who designed these arches - near-identical ones mark every road entrance into every former walled city in this 'verse - said they took their inspiration from the Brandenburg Gate. Every dimension in Prime has one of those, the Berlin Wall being one of the few pieces of history common in Heaven, Hell, and Earth alike.

Also, in case it wasn't clear, when I used "they" for the architect, that's their subject pronoun. If I'm not mistaken, their name is Kaufman too, like Grace's man in Bearville. Any relation? I suppose I'll have to ask this Kaufman when we meet him. If he's willing to talk, that is.

"All right," Harris says. "Do we gotta strain our ears for the sounds of 'Jailhouse Rock?'"

"What, to find the prison?" Yash stops at the base of the archway and checks the map on his phone. "No, we just keep going another ten blocks east, three blocks south."

I feel like we've been walking all day now. "Are you guys...can you not fly?" I don't know why it's never occurred to me before to ask if they can. I don't think they can - I've tried to spot wings under their shirts, which would be easy for Yash given his liking for athletic gear, but no go. Unless they've got big demon wings like mine? It's really the feathers that give angels' wings their telltale under-the-shirt bulge.

"We can," Aditya says so quickly, he must be messing with me. "We just choose not to."

"Not everyone has wings, you know," Yash says. "And personally, I think it's weird that we Terminal types don't get to have any." He looks up at the sky, shielding his eyes from the late-afternoon sun reflecting off one of the nearby buildings. Glass-fronted, thank God, not the rainbow-brite concrete common to Second 'Verse cities until very recently. It looks like a new construction, in which case, they managed to put it up very quickly. Quicker than any similar building in Prime, I'm thinking.

One of those buildings, I think, stands on the site of the one where Russell died.

"How come you don't get wings?" Harris asks.

"Hell if I know. Just another privilege Adi and I don't get." Yash takes a turn around the next corner.

"I thought you said it was ten blocks in," I remind him.

"I forgot there was construction on that street."

Aditya screws his earbuds into place - the kid reminds me oddly of Alex when he does that - and yells, "I dunno if you've noticed, but there's construction on literally every street in this town!"

"Besides this one," Yash mutters.

"What was that? I couldn't hear you!"

They fight all the way to our destination. I wouldn't call it an argument, not when Aditya's spouting off nonsense. Random shit because he's temporarily reduced his hearing. Whatever he and his brother are, I guess their senses aren't any better than those of Primers or scrivs. I'd ask what their species are, but I don't want to sound rude about it. Or racist. So I've been keeping my mouth shut on that subject for a while, and assuming they're some kind of trans-universal divine beings. Who happen to take on the form of teenage boys just for kicks.

Right.

At the prison gates, Yash, being tall like me, bends down a bit so he can look into the camera, which is more at Harris' head height. "Hey," he says. "Is Kaufman here? We need to see him. Grace Muscat sent us."

"At least that makes you more official than our last guest at this gate." It's a man's voice, snarky but authoritative at the same time.

I slide in next to Yash. "Let me guess - muscular brunet scriv?"

"I thought brunettes were women only."

"Take the last two letters off and you get the masculine form, en français."

"Française comme ma mère? Don't French-splain me, garçon."

I don't normally play up the usual gay stereotypes à la Felix Dawkins, but for this buttmunch, I think I might have to dial up the sass. I don't care if he is a prison warden, he's got it coming. "Excuse me, sir," I say in a higher voice than normal, pointing at the camera with my wrist, "but I'm not your fucking server-"

"No, actually, my server's on the fritz right now, so if one of you boys knows jack shit about IT, then come right on in."

Aditya raises his hand as he steps in between me and Yash. "I dabble. Pettily."

Snapped fingers over the intercom. "You'll do. Come in, all of you. Can't let this shrimp in unsupervised."

As Aditya holds his middle finger just out of the camera's view, Harris tiptoes up behind me and thinks, When do we tell him we're all minors here?

Technically, Yash says, I'm not. I'm eighteen.

Since when? I ask before realizing that no, I don't think Yash ever told us his age in the months since we've met him. I just assumed he was sixteen or seventeen or so.

Since November. Now be careful. If any place has the technology to listen in on thoughts through the cameras, it'd be this place.

Any place that keeps Penner incarcerated shouldn't have that level of tech, I say solemnly. Just look what he was able to do with TJ.

We stop in the lobby and wait a moment before Kaufman himself appears. I know it's him because of how he stands tall, head held high, shoulders squared - basically, all the "I'm the biggest badass in the room" mannerisms we inherited from our baboon ancestors. He's also very blond and gray-eyed, looking even more like he could be my father than my actual bio dad, if anything. And I already look too much like Elijah as it is. Russell once showed me the records proving how much of a dead ringer for eighteen-year-old Elijah Emery I am right now. Maybe this guy is what Elijah should look like at his current age, except he doesn't because of the weirdness of Second 'Verse aging.

"Kaufman, I presume," Harris says, because he's the only one who doesn't look even the slightest bit intimidated.

Kaufman gets to the point. "Which of you is the hacker again?"

"I wouldn't call myself a hacker-" Aditya begins.

Kaufman waits until Aditya's voice trails off. "Do you computer? Do you, uh, do computer shit?" And he doesn't even ask for his French to be pardoned.

"Sometimes, yeah-"

This time, Kaufman doesn't wait. "Then you're a hacker. Come with me if you want to live." And not even an Ahnold impression. No sense of humor with this guy, I'm guessing. "Or, more accurately, if you want us all to live." He then looks around, sizes the rest of us up, and adds, "Presumptuous one, you come with me too."

Harris points to his own chest in a "who, me?" way.

"You look small and slippery enough to escape in case of some kind of cave-in." As Harris slowly blanches at the thought of it, Kaufman then beckons to me and Yash. "And you two - I'm only having you come along, Yash, 'cause Grace mentioned your name first - you go down one level and you'll meet your brunet."

"How far down are they going?" I ask, feeling scared for Harris and Aditya. Especially Harris. After we stole the Black Mirror from that underground office in Snoqualmie, and especially after the place got missiled out of existence, he's had a certain phobia of the subterranean. He's even been known to have nightmares about caves from time to time. Not that we're going into a cave...or are we? The number of buttons on the elevator panel is high enough that I really wonder how deep this thing goes.

Seriously, what is it with the Second 'Verse and underground tunnels? There's more urban development beneath the surface than on it. Makes me wonder some more, wonder about whether or not scrivs evolved from badger-moles or hamsters or something. And here I thought they were more directly evolved from dinosaurs than even us demons.

Kaufman doesn't answer my question. He simply waits for the elevator to stop on the first basement level and tells me and Yash to get off here. "Your friend is in interrogation," he says. "Don't worry, we're not actually interrogating him. It's just the closest holding-type place to the surface that isn't an official cell."

"That's...reassuring." I step out, Yash right behind me, and we both turn around and wave to those we love before the heavy-duty elevator doors slide closed on us.

Yash and I set off, barely daring to talk to each other until we reach the door marked "Interrogation" in surprisingly small but still stark and menacing letters. As I put my hand on the doorknob, but don't turn it, he asks, "Didn't Russell Aspen die in a room just like this one?"

"I'm pretty sure Penner hasn't been able to smuggle sangrite anywhere in a while."

He scratches the scruff on his jaw. "Sangrite? That's how he did it? Shit, I thought they mined that stuff out centuries ago."

"They did?"

"So I've heard. But what do I know? I don't live in this 'verse."

"Yeah, and I'm no mineralogist..." I turn the knob, only to find that the door refuses to open. It must be deadbolted from the inside. "I bet he's got the resources to make this in some lab at Peppermint. Haha, maybe that meteorite was lab-made too, you know?" I knock on the door to get the attention of TJ, or whoever's guarding him, because I refuse to believe Kaufman would've left him alone.

"Maybe," says Yash. "We'd need further chemical analysis of the rock to be sure, though."

There's a click, and the door opens, forcing me to step back because I was too close at first. "Oh," says the guard, a Latino guy who reminds me a bit of Gideon's dad. (I haven't actually met Mr. Cabrera, but I've seen him alongside Gideon in a picture.) "I thought you were the boss."

"The boss sent us," says Yash.

I slide past the guard to get a glimpse of TJ at last. He's sitting at a table, drumming his hands on the tabletop. Very loudly, too, since the table's a sheet of metal.

"I was gonna cut this guy's hands off if he kept this up much longer," says the guard in an undertone.

"Nope." I wave hi to TJ until I get his attention, and he waves back, thankfully not with a creepy-ass Penner smile. "My cousin's off limits to you and your bad touch, man.'

"You know he wasn't really gonna cut my hands off, right?" TJ stands up, revealing, thank God, that he's not cuffed or chained. "Wait, you said 'cousin?' What, for real?" He looks around like something just flew over his head closely enough to cut off some of the tuftiest parts of his hair.

"For sure," I tell him. "So my brother says. He's just met yours back in Prime."

"Aww yeah, sweet!" TJ pumps his fist twice. "Holy shit, that's some coincidence, am I right?"

"Yeah..." I let my voice trail off. "Some coincidence." Except now, I'm starting to think maybe not. Call it a bit of healthy paranoia, but me and Alex learning at the same time that we've got another set of twins as cousins, one dead and one alive? And we meet them both at around the same time too? And I meet the one who's fallen victim to the latest evil plot against us?

No, I'm starting to think someone planned this. Penner? Or Alicia? Or someone higher up in the Peppermint hierarchy? They're so insidious-

"Whoa!" everyone cries when the lights go out. I can't really speak for Yash or TJ or the guard, but me, I immediately lose a bit of balance and stumble backward, my back hitting the wall.

I shake my head, hoping to clear it, then look around and try to squint through the darkness. There's really nothing I can see, not even the usual red light indicating the camera is running.

Nothing but a pair of tiny green lights in the shape of the Peppermint leaf logo.

I peer closer and the lights shift away from me, retreating out of sight. "Dude, who's breathing on my hands?" TJ says. "Oh, it's you, Gabe. What's going...oh. Oh, you know, I totally forgot to tell you my ink glows in the dark..."

I grab him and push him against the wall to shut him up so I don't have to hear his chipper voice. "Penner. Go the fuck away."

"Who's Penner?" TJ sounds a little panicked now. "Gabe, it's me! Your cousin! Or, uh, you said I was your cousin...but I swear, that guy's not in my head anymore! It's all me talking right now!"

"Then why the hell are you here?" I ask. "Here where Penner is?"

"They just...they picked me up on the side of the road outside San Jose," TJ says, his breath coming in quick pants as he continues to panic. "Hey, man, could you let me go? I'm kinda starting to freak out a bit..."

I relax my grip on his shoulders, but I don't let go of him completely. It sounds like he's back in control, all right...but if he thinks he's in San Jose, Penner clearly got into his head and didn't let go until very recently. Maybe he left his head right when the lights went out? I really couldn't tell you.

"Light the way," I tell TJ. "Help us find our friends."

He shines a pair of hand beams around the room, illuminating first me, then Yash and the guard. "Where are they?"

"Hopefully not stuck in the elevator," says Yash.

"That depends," says the guard. "How far down did they go? All the way to the bottom? No way they got down there before the lights went out." He looks up at the ceiling, shining a flashlight on the security camera, which is still completely dark. "Shit, why's the emergency power not coming on?"

I look between the guard and TJ. "We gotta split up," I say. "You, uh..." I snap my fingers at the guard, not knowing his name because he has no name tag.

"Javi."

"We'll check out the elevator, Javi," Yash says. "And, uh, Gabe, TJ, you go find the emergency power and turn it on. Is it far?"

"One level down," says Javi. "The second floor is all generators and utilities and shit. Shouldn't be that hard to find." He twirls the key ring attached to his belt. "Let's get this over with, boys."

A minute later, we go down a flight of stairs, and Javi unlocks the second-floor door so TJ and I can go in. "Backup generator's behind the third door on the left," he says. "Meet us right here when you're done, okay? And don't tell Kaufman I let you in here."

"He'll probably find out anyway," I mutter as TJ and I close the door behind us.

We find the door Javi told us about and open it - it's unlocked, which sets my internal alarms off even more. Inside is a panel of buttons and switches on the back wall, with only a small computer terminal off to one side to indicate how far technology for generators has come since Jurassic Park. I tap the space bar on the computer to wake it up, and hit a dead end with a password request screen. And there's no cheat sheet on the desk to help me out.

"You could always ask me for help."

It's TJ's voice, but Penner-ized.

"Goddammit!" I jump out of the chair and kick it across the room.

"Pissed that you can't shut my dulcet tones down without damaging your blood, aren't you?" Penner says oh-so-saccharine-sweetly. "Though as I understand it, you and Thomas are second cousins, so...not that closely related." He titters to himself. "Have I told you how much I enjoy porting into his brain and occupying his body? Talk about a confidence booster! I'm a pretty enough man, but Thomas is far more attractive than I'll ever be-"

Sorry, TJ, but I have to Gibbs-slap you. "I swear to God, I'm gonna tear your tongue out just to make you stop talking. Your tongue, I mean."

"And so I can bleed to death too, is that right?"

"You catch on quick. See, I knew you were a genius." TJ pushes past me and starts typing away. "Wait, no, what the hell?" I try to push him out of the way, but Penner makes him hook his ankles around the legs of the swivel chair so it's almost impossible to move him without subjecting him to a cow-tipping. "Stop! Stop it!" I shake TJ bodily, but it doesn't stop his hands working the keyboard like a master.

"And...return." TJ hits that key, and the computer jumps from the password screen to the main desktop. "Now press the green buttons, both at once, and exactly at once, otherwise you'll make me have to enter all that code all over again. Trust me, you don't want me to do that. I could give your cousin carpal tunnel faster than you can say-"

"Fuck you, Penner. Fuck. You."

He has TJ stand up and glance around the room before reaching around behind his back and saying, "I wonder what it'd be like to stuff a lit-up finger or three up his ass."

Flipping Penner off and giving him an ice-bladed fingertip as well, I then press the two green buttons simultaneously with my other middle finger, plus its index neighbor. Nothing happens for an eternity, then green light strips kick in on the lower and upper corners of the walls, like in a movie theater.

"We did it?" TJ shuts his light hands off and holds both hands in front of himself. "Oh, I'm sorry," he says sheepishly. "Yeah, I didn't mean for you to see me scratching my-" He looks around a couple of times, then asks, "Wait, how'd we get down here?"

"Come on." I steer him out of this small room and back to the stairwell. "I need to keep an eye on you for a while. And keep Penner out of your head." Out on the stairwell, I sit him down on the top step and put my arm around his shoulders. Not that it can really stop Penner from activating whatever virus he's downloaded into TJ's brain, but if I can physically keep my cousin in place, at least it grants me some level of control to subvert that sick fuck's will.