That Sunday morning, Gavin parked his classy car in the underground parking, next to the other sexy cars that he was permitted to drive. He then took the elevator to the shooting range on the tenth floor, where he would coach Molly and Clifford on firearm etiquettes, where Molly and Clifford should have been, but weren't. He asked a guy if he had seen them, but he was of no help.

Gavin went up to the Ranking Room because he knew Stefan would be there. They were friends, they got over their disputes, at least when Aimee was involved.

"What, are you sure?" queried Stefan.

"I double-checked."

"And Aimee isn't here either. You think they're okay?"

"Do you?" he asked. At the same time, he had replied to Stefan's question.

"Val, Finn, I'm heading out," he addressed them and casually nodded at Dominick.

His friends refrained from asking questions; they knew that whatever it was, it deserved his attention.

Gavin drove the McLaren to the Griffiths, with Stefan riding shotgun. When they arrived, Stefan swung his door open, with a little too much faith in the strength of its hinges, and rushed to the house.

"Aimee?!" he called, knocking vigorously on the front door.

There was no answer, so he tried opening it. Unlocked. Gavin followed him inside once he had locked the car. He addressed each of her parents, and that time, they responded.

"Gavin, is that you?" bellowed Clifford.

His voice came from upstairs. They ran up to Aimee's bedroom, but then they reached her door and the scene before them was petrifying. She was sitting on the floor, her parents on either side of her, flustered and babbling on about how they had already called an ambulance. Aimee's left hand was concealing her right, staunching blood, and there was a reddened shard of glass beside them on the carpet.

Stefan and Gavin barely allowed themselves a second of hesitation; they had to do something immediately, they had to help. They hastened to her.

What had happened? Celeste had missed a shard when she cleaning out Aimee's room and it had crept beneath her pillow, where she had been sleeping on her arm. When she woke up, it had lodged itself in her forearm. She had pulled it out and screamed, the sound alerting her parents. She had remained on the floor, as she was now. It was as if the pain had paralysed her.

"I'm okay," she lied. Molly slapped her.

"Molly!" Cliff scolded her, eyes agape.

She cupped her mouth in shame, "I'm sorry," she said to them both.

Aimee nodded, understanding that she could not really blame her. She wondered what was taking the ambulance van so long.

Gavin carried Aimee by the underside of her knees and her upper back. He was extremely cautious, considering the aggregate of worry in him. She was frail and faint and losing too much blood. He carried her down the passage and the stairs, with three followers behind him.

"Take her to GINM, Janet will take good care of her," suggested Stefan.

He agreed.

Stefan glanced at Aimee. "What happened?" he inquired.

"Don't worry, Stefan."

"You can't ask that of me."

He noticed her tightening grip on her right forearm. "I'm okay," she insisted again, "I'll be okay."

Stefan sighed and mustered up the faith to say, "I know you will."

"Do you two have any idea how awkward this is?" uttered Gavin. He was still carrying her and about to seat her into his car, and yet Stefan and her spoke as if they were the only people on the planet.

Gavin sat Aimee down and observed her wound swiftly. Déjà vu.

He sighed and held his hand out to Stefan, "Give me your shirt."

"What?"

Gavin did not take his eyes off of Aimee, "Just hand it over, Stefan."

Naturally – because the universe was good and kind – Stefan complied, taking off his shirt and revealing his six-pack, which was so defined that it made Aimee blush intensely and comically and embarrassingly all at once, like some fourteen-year-old with erratic hormones. Gavin took the shirt and wrapped it skilfully around her forearm and the hand that staunched the blood.

He climbed in at the driver's seat of his two-seater car and Stefan watched him in confusion.

"No one's driving my car but me," said Gavin, strapping in and revving the engine. "Hitch a ride with Molly and Clifford. I'll keep her safe, I promise."

"Gavin!" Aimee protested.

"No time for debate," he said to both of them.

There was no way Stefan would survive a ride with her parents, especially in his current, semi-dressed state. But Gavin reversed out of the driveway promptly – no time for debate. Stefan turned around nervously in the driveway, facing Molly and Clifford.

Cliff sighed, "Let's get you a shirt, quickly."

Gavin sat her down on a bed in the medic room. He stayed by her side, even though she swore her mantra: I'm okay. Gavin was kneeling beside her bed and squeezing her hand in his when Stefan ambled into the room, wearing one of Cliff's chequered camping shirts. Gavin smiled, releasing Aimee's hand.

"Took you long enough," he chuckled at Stefan, who returned a smile.

"Thanks, Gavin... for taking care of her."

Gavin left the room, left Aimee alone with her hero. Stefan neared her bed with a friendly smile and glanced at her cut.

"It's not nice to stare, Stefan," she said, wearily, in jest. "You know what would make me feel a lot better, though?"

"What?"

"If you took off your shirt again," she winked at him, and he laughed.

Aimee continued to press on her forearm, and only lifted her left hand when that Janet and another nurse required an unencumbered view of her cut. Janet was vigilant not to move her wrist too much as she removed the T-shirt that concealed it. She took just as much care in cleaning it. For the time, she was wordless. A part of Aimee appreciated the lack of questioning. At each dab of the towel Janet used, the wound hurt less. Aimee had not expected it to be such a painless process; usually having a wound doused with chemicals – no matter how diluted – burned. She ogled the glass basin beside her, into which the towel was repeatedly dipped. The water darkened each time from the blood. She watched Janet again; she was squeezing the towel dry with one hand, since the other carefully supported her injured forearm.

Janet suggested, "Maybe once we get this under a Band-Aid, we can remove that cast of yours?"

Aimee beamed, "Really?"

"It's been a week, hasn't it?"

"Two actually," she replied, realising only then how weird it was that the local hospital had not contacted them since the incident. Stefan realised it, too, as he sat next to her on the bed. "I guess you can then," she allowed.

Janet gave the two a smile, "I'll look at yours as well, Stefan."

"The doctor said I won't be out of mine for at least a month."

"I know... and I hate to sound like your father, but you need to start training again, as soon as possible. I'll just look at it, okay?" she said, coercing herself a reassuring smile.

She glimpsed over her shoulder, at the nurse who was supposedly assisting her. She knew promptly to get what Janet needed. Soon, Aimee's cast-encased arm was soaked in a transferable tub of water, and her cast began to feel awkwardly like papier-mâché. Meanwhile, Janet unattached Stefan's cast, which was made of a different material, and observed his leg.

"Does that hurt?" she asked, poking a section of his calf. "And that?" she poked another section. He shook his head 'no' both times.

Janet's assistant proceeded to remove Aimee's cast, and then she examined her freshly wrapped forearm. "You healed up quickly," she told Aimee, sounding less happy than expected.

Having overheard, Janet approached Aimee in an opaque curiosity, which soon became shock.

"Maybe the blood made it seem worse than it actually was?" Aimee guessed, equally dumfounded and discomforted as her nurses.

Janet tried to ignore the perfection of her healing – there was nothing, barely a scratch – and she went about applying an ointment to Aimee's arm. It carried the smell and colour of aloe, and the scent overpowered every other medicine induced odour in the room. The nurse applied the same ointment to Stefan's leg as she told him that once she was done he could go.

Aimee tried not to notice how well her wrist had healed, or the way Janet kept staring at the faint scar that her wound had become.

"You can go, too," Janet muttered, as she finished rubbing in the ointment.

Aimee and Stefan stood up unhesitant, even though his leg was clumsy without the cast to which he had become accustomed. As they made their way to the door, Janet noticed the strip of bandaging that was sticking out from under Aimee's top like a tail.

"Aimee," she addressed her. "You're injured somewhere else, too? Let me see, how come no one told me about this?" she inquired, insulted slightly. "Stefan?"

"I... I'm sorry," he uttered. "I know, I should've said something."

"Aimee, let me see it."

She nodded and returned to the bed obediently, Stefan behind her.

Janet sat her down, "Will you hold up your top, please."

Half-heartedly, she did what was asked of her, and Janet started removing the bandages. She smiled calmly, but as the skin was bared, she slowed down, her smile faded, and her eyes changed.

"What's wrong?" Aimee asked, while her mind prematurely created grotesque imaginings of what she could not see.

Janet shuddered, "Uhm, y-your..." she trailed off.

Aimee inspected her wound herself, and soon came to the realisation that it was gone – her wound was gone. It had not even scarred. She would have been ecstatic, if she could fathom it.

"What the heck?!" she cried. It was as if it was never there.

"Don't freak out," said Stefan, trying to comfort her, even though he himself was recovering from a similar bewilderment. "I'm sure there's a good explanation."

"There is," Janet sighed in a way that only concerned them more.

Wordless, she walked out of the room, knowing that Stefan and Aimee's worried eyes would follow. Soon, the three of them sauntered down busy hallways until they were stepping into an elevator.

"I'm not entirely sure," Janet began, "but I think there's a microchip inside of you."

"Say what?"

"I'm not sure," – she pressed the button to the fourth level – "but we'll find out."

Aimee stood nearer to Stefan. Her trust in Janet was not nearly as strong as the angst in her heart. This chip had Abba written all over it, in the clearest calligraphy.

The elevator doors parted and Janet hurried out, down more hallways. Stefan and Aimee followed her with ease; she was not very fast on her slender legs. They took a left turn into a separate passage, where numerous steel doors stretched on their right. Janet's lab hid behind one of them, and she unlocked the door, and they ambled in.

"Sit," she gestured to the chairs at her desk.

Her office was huge, but not as over-elaborate as Buckley's, and on the far right of where they stood was the laboratory corner – all the pointy science gadgets and gizmos on lengthy, glossy tables.

Janet sat in her rolling chair and her sleeves mopped the desk when she reached for her laptop and pulled it closer. Her fingers bobbed across the keyboard, and then she turned the laptop to face them. There were pictures and labels for those pictures, and lines and words. All she said was "Brad, call Buckley down, please." and she was speaking into the barely visible earpiece that she regularly wore. Aimee looked at Stefan, but his focus was put into trying to make sense of the gibberish on that computer screen, and Janet was sitting there quietly, waiting for Buckley, Aimee assumed. She had to wait too, and she hated it.

Moments later, Brad opened the door and Buckley walked in, looking exhausted again. He fixed his collar.

"You!" hollered Aimee. "Janet says I have a microchip in me – explain!"

He heard her, but chose to ignore her, as he strolled around the desk and to Janet's side.

"You got your cast removed," he noted, glimpsing at her for a millisecond before he leaned over Janet's shoulder.

They could only tolerate each other when they were working, that way it was almost like they could pretend, could dismiss the fact that they knew each other on an emotional level. They were professional. That was all.

"It's as we feared," Janet said once she had reclaimed her laptop, her tone somewhere between blunt and macabre.

Stefan searched for something else to busy himself with. When Buckley entered the room, Stefan had hidden behind the gibberish on the computer screen that was no longer in front of him. It had been a distraction from his presence and he needed another one. He tore a piece of paper from the notepad on the desk, grabbed a pen from the penholder beside it and started jotting something down hastily.

Buckley cleared his throat, "We recently discovered how Abba and Benjamin came back after dying."

His voice was casual, as though he had done this a billion times, and Stefan stopped writing.