***GABE***

My first challenge is to remember which room off this corridor housed the space rocks. Unless Peppermint has moved them by now? It's been a few days since our last attempt at breaching this place, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised.

Why is it that every time I breach a place, there's always a long corridor with too many rooms leading off it? I almost want to analyze it for symbolism, but I'd probably find myself tumbling down yet another rabbit hole.

Wait.

I hear something familiar, not just the sounds of Peppermint plants struggling to get back to their feet after my icy lightning attack.

Beyond a door, the only one even slightly ajar instead of fully closed like the others, is a "Whoa-oh-oh" I know all too well.

Except it's not the original artist. This guy can't sing with ChronoWulf's emotional range. He can't sing, period. Yeah, I know, I'm the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to anyone's singing. Judge me too, assbutts. It's only my karma letting it happen.

Or can he sing? Maybe I'm not hearing it right because it's filtered through that door.

Nah, when I actually open the door, I hear it for real and it's not just the acoustics. He's genuinely unable to stop the pitch of his voice from wavering all over the place. And while I can't see his entire face, the side view I get looks pained as hell.

I have no idea who this guy is. He's white with brown hair, and not very big. Average-sized, maybe, but next to someone as tall as me, he looks like an even younger boy. And I'm not just saying that because he's got a bit of a baby face, even with the stubble creeping up his jawline. It's easy to forget that he's got some kind of Peppermint affiliation, because he just looks so sweet and innocent.

If only he could sing worth a bloody damn. This must be how Alex feels when I sing his favorite songs. Hell, even when I sing my own favorite songs.

He twitches, as if hearing my thoughts through the heavy, industrial-strength headphones he's got on. Turning my way, he pulls those headphones off his ears, allowing me to hear the actual sounds of "Another Place" on his phone or iPod. Amazingly, for a guy working for one of Apple's biggest rivals, it really is an iPod, and a very vintage one too, dating back to the days of the click wheel. As 'Wulf sings about the mesmerization borne of this ethereal world, my new friend, whomever he may be, adjusts his tie and loosens the collar of his plaid shirt, which he keeps untucked.

"Winn Schott?" I ask, unable to resist. "Is that you?"

"Now you know whose basement the CW locked me up in after they ruined Supergirl," he says with a chuckle. "Ezra Mientus. And you are?"

I find myself reaching out to shake his hand, in spite of myself. "Gabe Snow. So you're...you're the..."

"The guy who started this company and now his best friend stabbed him in the back to take it all over?" Mientus doesn't sound pissed about it at all, strangely enough, but that could just be him being hella good at hiding the pain. What's even more strange, though, is that he's not reaching out to shake my hand. Is he a germaphobe or something? Should I bump fists with him instead?

"Yeah," I find myself saying slowly. "That."

"Don't worry, it's not as dramatic as it sounds when I introduce myself that way." Mientus sighs softly, staring through me almost as if I'm not even there. Maybe to him, I'm not even. Except he said hi to me. What gives with this guy? Who does he remind me of...believe it or not, not so much Winn Schott, but Absolem from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Obviously not in terms of appearance, but in terms of his oddly blah attitude about where he is in the space-time continuum.

Wherever that is, I get the feeling he might have been pretty adversely affected by those damn space rocks.

Rocks which are actually floating around both our feet and ankles. White ones, black ones. Little viewers to the past and future. I resist the temptation to pick any of them up, especially the white ones. A hard temptation to resist when they're gravitating my way while Mientus is surrounded mostly by black rocks. Do they only give me terrifying future visions with skin contact? Experimentally, I kick one away with the instep of my shoe, and it gives me nothing in response except to float off for a second before coming back to orbit me again.

Is it because I'm a light elemental now? Do these future rocks sense that in me and want to hug and kiss me because of that? No touchy-touchy, you stupid rocks!

"Do you see me?" I finally ask Mientus.

"I see you, yeah. But are you normally this tie-dyed? I didn't know these things took me back to times before I was born." He chuckles into his hand. "Summer of Love? San Francisco?"

"I was never there either." I kinda wish I was, but then again, that was before San Francisco really became the West Coast seat of Pride. I might not have been able to revel as much as I would really have wanted to. If I were less monogamous, that is. "So you think I'm...what the hell are you on, man? Acid?"

"Something like that, I think." Mientus chuckles again. "I'd be a hell of a lot angrier if I weren't."

I nod wanly, wanting to look around the room to see where was the source of whatever this psychic projection is. Or maybe it's a projection from one of those machines like they have in classrooms now. I still remember my earliest elementary school days when the old-fashioned overhead projectors, the kind Giles used in "Hush," were still the go-to for educators. Mom actually still has her old one - she kept it after they upgraded the entire school to digital projectors.

Maybe it is a psychic projector. In which case, where's the real Mientus? Stuck in the past? The future? Or maybe some other room with IVs perpetually feeding him a cocktail of mood-altering drugs. Acid must be in there somewhere too. I didn't know Peppermint would employ Walter Bishop, but let's not forget that history he's got with Massive Dynamic.

"How do I get you out of here?" I ask him, even though I'm pretty sure he won't answer.

Sure enough, he doesn't. "Why would I wanna leave? I'm fine where I am, thanks."

"You're not fine. You think I'm tie-dyed - the brightest colored thing on me right now is my goddamn underwear, but you're not gonna see that, no signore-"

"Your eyes?" Mientus asks, nodding at mine with a twinkle in his.

"Okay, you're cute, but you're also, what, thirty? At least? And I'm only seventeen. I just got through telling this kid we gays aren't all Call Me-"

"I'm not into kids," Mientus says, finally firmly. "But your eyes are beautiful. Anyone can see that, even a lowly little straight like me." He ruins that firmness with another little chuckle.

"Well, thank you," I say with a blush.

"Oh look," Mientus says with another laugh. My God, when did he start sounding like Cat Valentine too? "Now you look really colorful!"

I resist the urge to reach out and slap him. Though if I tried, I'd at least prove that he's some kind of psychic projection. Or perhaps not, in which case I might actually make him mad enough to override whatever drugs he's on.

Maybe the space rocks are the drugs. Which would mean I've got how long until I'm in a state like his? I'm not willing to find out.

So I pull a little experimental idea out of my proverbial hat. Closest I've got right now is a hood, but whatever. It's not stopping me hitting some of the black rocks floating around Mientus with both barrels.

One barrel, the ice one, gets no effect other than coating the black rock in frost.

The other, the light barrel, spears through its target and destroys it in a puff of smoke and sound powerful enough to pop my ears.

"Yo!" Mientus cries, covering his own ears and blinking rapidly. "What the hell? Party foul, bro!"

"If there's one thing I'm good at, it's fouling parties." Okay, that's a lie. "Did I ever..." I hit a second rock with my light beam and blow it up. "Did I ever tell you about the time..." My voice fades when the latest rock-splosion shows me, not hippie-dippy Mientus complaining about my attack on his good time, but what looks instead like deady-ready Mientus lying in a dentist-type chair.

"What?" Mientus groans when his clearly-alive self returns to view. "You were about to tell me about the time you got blackout drunk and took a massive shit all over your host's living room floor?" He laughs, and finally it sounds more snarky and pissed than the artificial squeaky-toy laugh he kept repeating before. "Or was it your own floor?"

"Consider my bluff called." I screw my eyes shut, then reopen them when I'm ready to fire more light. This time, I actually manage to hit two rocks at once with light, but my right hand generates a weaker beam. Probably because it's not my dominant power, and my dominant hand is keyed more for water and ice. Harris has told me that's more or less how his own dual powers work - and he had his for years, even when he was still a warlock back on Earth. Anyway, because of that beam not being as strong, it doesn't destroy the rock it hits. It only cracks it.

"What bluff? That you're a party fouler?"

"Yeah, but think of it like this. I'm getting you out of here." Or is that another bluff on my part? The more rocks I destroy, the more I see Mientus looking all dead. The effect doesn't last long, but it does last longer each time. Which gives me time to look closer and realize that he's not moving at all, but he's still got an IV full of viscous black fluid dripping straight into his vein. "Dude, what gives?" I ask. "Are they making you a nightblood?"

"Great," Mientus remarks. "More CW references for the list." His hippie self reappears, this time behind me, but I can still reach out and feel his hand lying lifeless on the arm of the chair. Lifeless, but...yeah, that's a pulse. Thin and thready, but it's not all gone. "No, that black stuff you're seeing, that's basically liquefied space rocks. Melted and cooled so it doesn't burn me from the inside out when it takes me back to the past. And leaves me feeling all 'Ooooooooh!'" He waves his hands all around, even skipping back and forth on the spot like a lawn fairy. "But now you're messing with my vibe, so that takes off the edge of this high."

"Sorry if you're not happy about that, but it's gotta be done." I gesture to the currently-empty spot where his chair sits in the real world. "If you could see how much you look like death warmed over right now-"

"Believe me, I know." He shudders. "Kris, last time he came in to see me, he showed me a vision with the white rocks." He reaches out, and one of the white rocks floating around my feet - not only in the vision, I've been noticing, but in reality too - flies to his hand as if summoned telekinetically. "Actually, make that a dozen visions. All of me being stuck-" When the rock touches his hand, though, he gasps. "Holy shit!"

"What?" I ask. "Good future? Bad future? The rocks only ever showed me a bad one, so I'm gonna guess-"

"If they showed you a bad one, it was probably your first time, right?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Yeah, the white rocks are regular rock trolls. They like to start you off with the worst possible future you could imagine." Mientus gives a small but genuine laugh. "If you don't mind me asking, what was that vision of yours?"

"My brother. Dead."

He folds his arms and looks pensively off to the side. "Shows how good your relationship is. Better than me and my own brother. I haven't spoken to him since I moved out west to set up shop with Kris."

"Kris," I repeat. "Scoville, right?"

"Kristoff," Mientus says. "Yeah, maybe I should start using his full name. He's not a good enough friend to me to deserve such familiar nicknaming."

"What's his endgame?" I ask.

Mientus keeps his arms folded, then sits down. I find myself copying him as he says, "He and I just wanted to do our own thing. We heard about the two Steves in Prime - you had two of each one, right? - and we wanted to emulate them 'cause nobody'd done what they did over here."

"Jobs and Wozniak, yeah. A demon, adopted by a Heavenly family, and an angel."

"Or two humans on Earth," Mientus says. "I'm a natural-born scriv myself, from this 'verse. But Kristoff, he was Earth-born. So when he found out for the first time about worlds beyond his..." He whistles, whooshing his hand over his head. "Suffice it to say Kristoff was hella inspired. A little too much so, if you ask me in hindsight."

"How so?"

"Because he met God and they started making some pretty nasty plans together." Mientus scoffs, as do I. "Or, at least, so Kristoff said to me."

"Plans like what?" I ask, even though I'm pretty sure I can figure out the answer.

"Oh, the usual take-over-the-world type shit," Mientus says. "With a side of 'God's gonna fucking double-cross you,' but did Kristoff listen to me? No sir. He got too proud to care what anyone else thought of him, and believe me, anyone who actually knew him, after a while, they all thought ill of him." He rolls his eyes. "Trust me, Gabe, I'm not the only one he's locked up in a room full of black-rock bags."

"And this God, or whatever he really is, he clues him in to whoever's badmounthing him behind his back?"

Mientus has been rolling his eyes more or less continuously just from talking about his ex-friend, but now he brings them back down to my level. "Honestly, I couldn't tell you if this guy was the real deal. Only Kristoff would meet him. Never me." He looks off to one side before adding, "I wouldn't wanna think this guy was the real God, though. I never believed God was a jerkface. Certainly not one with a self-aggrandizing name like 'Graziadei.'"

I think about Alex and wonder if he's met this Graziadei person himself. By now, he probably has, but I have no idea. Not without talking to him, which I haven't done in a few days, and that's really bugging me even more with every passing second. "No," I say. "I hope it's not the real God." Then, after another moment of thought, I add, "If the real one exists."

"You're atheist?"

"I used to be, but I've kinda morphed back into an agnostic over the years. I may be ex-Catholic, but it never really goes away."

"Mmm." Mientus sighs through his nose. "They locked me up 'cause I was getting too close to finding out the truth. And trust me, there was a ton of truth. More than I could fit on a single flash drive."

I drum my fingers on my leg. "There's no way I can take you with me right now, but trust me, I'll be back to save you." I stand up, dusting my jeans off. "And anyone else who's locked up here with you."

"Hey, wait!" Mientus waves to me as I approach the door, which, strangely, is still right in place. "Take one of these rocks with you!"

"Why?" I wrap my hands in the ends of my sleeves before Mientus reaches down and picks up one of the white rocks to throw me. It's very hard to catch this way, but I manage to pull it off. "Will it help me on my quest?"

"It might!" Mientus calls out. "And hey, maybe when you touch it, it'll show you something different. Something better than a dead brother."

I nod as I open the door. "First thing we're gonna do when we get you back to the land of the living, we're gonna have you call your brother."

"Thanks," Mientus says, clapping his hands. "And also, thanks for taking one of these rocks. The fewer Kristoff has, the better."

"Why does he have so many of them anyway?"

"Because Graziadei taught him how to fuck with time, and he's not a god, so he can't do it without losing all his stability." Mientus takes a step back as I step over the threshold. "I don't say this lightly, but if you see him, make sure someone gives him a nice little shock. It might just rupture his heart. Like, for real."

I wave goodbye to Mientus before closing the door. "Advice noted," I mutter to myself, even though someone out here might hear me. "Now, where the hell are the-"

Someone hears me.

Multiple someones, in fact, all with those little Peppermint symbols glowing on their wrists as they've had their brains hijacked.

And TJ and Kensi are leading the way.

I form the longest light blade I've made yet with my left hand, then toss that blade into my right so I can wield it better. "I'm not one of yours," I call out to them. "Good luck infecting me with brain viruses!"

In truth, though, I'm really wishing I could still have that little brain earwig thing I had while I was...subconscious. Because if Jackie's right, it could protect me from any Peppermint brain virus. Protection that my friends supposedly went into this place with, and no longer have.