"Well, that went quicker than I thought it would," Arnaud smiled. In about an hour or so she'd be awake and ready for training. This went much better than Fawkes' surgery. Considering how his thief had broken in to his Keeper's house, Fawkes could be here in about the same time Elena would begin training. That wouldn't take long either since he had already briefed her on how she'd need to control it. They already skimmed over biofeedback. It was now only a matter of time before Elena would awaken and practice using the quicksilver and Arnaud had already made a batch of counteragent just for her.

******************************

"It won't take too long you said? I'm beginning to think you lied to bring my hopes up, Maria." Darien sighed.

"I didn't think it would be THIS long. I thought fifteen, maybe twenty minutes tops, but NOT another hour," she glared at him. "So I was wrong, BIG DEAL."

"Darien, what time is it now, you're the only one with a watch on," Claire asked.

"No, I got one too," Hobbes pulled his jacket sleeve up a bit to show her, but Claire ignored him.

"It's now...10:00."

"My laptop was stolen at around 6:00 in the morning YESTERDAY, I'm pretty sure that if Arnaud has it now, he's gotten a gland made and possibly implanted it into a candidate," Claire pointed out. "And if he used the drugs I suggested for a speedier recovery, I'm sure that there may be another Iman out there."

"But doesn't it take a while to actually MAKE the gland?" Hobbes asked.

"I'm not really sure, I've never actually made one. But I do know that the drugs I suggested ran the three weeks down into a short hour."

"Wow. That is so unfair. I bet whoever it is won't have as big a headache as I did when Kev did it to me."

"No, they'll just be less disoriented," Hobbes interjected.

"Right, and they might have been told how to use the gland before-hand, so they'll understand what to do when ordered to use the gland..."

"Look, I hate to break this up but, I think it may be in one of those two warehouses," Maria pointed. "Possibly underground if you're talking lab and operating room."

"Right. Claire, you and Hobbes go see what's behind curtain number one, and me and Maria will check curtain number two." Darien ordered, and they split up.

Part 4:

"How are you feeling, Elena?" Arnaud approached her bedside, and she was just coming out of it.

"My head feels like it weighs a ton! What did you do about my hair? Didn't you have to shave my head?"

"Only part of it, and we grafted a few hair follicles in while you were under, though it may still be a bit thin down there-just wear a low pony-tail."

"Right," she began to sit up, and Arnaud helped her keep steady.

"Do you think you can try a demonstration for us?"

Elena nodded slowly, closing her eyes and taking a slow breath in through her nose. The odd feeling of slithering, living ice crawled all over her, but she tolerated it, concentrating on vanishing. Slowly opening her eyes, the world transformed into shades of black and white, a slight blurring at everything's edges. She saw Arnaud clapping and smiling.

"Good job, Elena! I suppose mastering you emotions and heart rate before the surgery helped you prepare for this, am I correct?"

"You are correct," she lowered her heart rate and let the quicksilver fall, her thoughts of kidnapping vanishing with it as it hit the floor with a sift tinkle. "Are you ready to get to work then?" he helped her to the door, handing her a new pair of clothes.

"Yes, I am."

"Then put these on and go out this door. I'll be waiting for you there."

******************************

"Maria? Do you see anything?" Darien was bumping around off of about everything in the extremely dark warehouse, and he found the question he just asked to be pretty darn stupid.

"No, Darien. It's too DARK. You wouldn't happen to have a flashlight, would you?"

"No, I'd be using it if I did," he bumped into something soft and heard it swear.

"Well then, we need to FIND one!" she was yelling right in his ear, and he had to fight the instinct to quicksilver.

The lights inside flickered and buzzed to life, startling him even more.

"Did you do that?"

"No, if I did, I wouldn't be standing here next to you."

"Well then, who did?"

A figure appeared out of thin air and tapped Maria on the shoulder.

"ELENA???"

"Hello sister!"

******************************

"I don't see anything here," Hobbes commented.

"Of course you don't, this warehouse is EMPTY!" Claire's voice bounced off the walls over and over, echoing as long as it could.

"Well then, let's go see what's up with the other two."

"Let's."

******************************

"Elena! They said they had you and they were going to do something with you, and there wasn't anything I could do to stop them!"

"They were right. Maria, you'll never believe what they did to me! It's so fantastic that I can't explain it! I want you to know that I've been fine since they took me, just a little scared, that's all."

Maria hugged her sister hard. "Just a little scared? What exactly DID they do to you?"

Elena pulled away and smiled. "They gave me the ability to do..." her grin grew wider as she coated herself in the liquid silver, "...this!"

"¡Qué barbaridad! How could they do this to you?" Maria tried to touch her by flinging her arms through the air.

"How is it awful?" Elena asked, still invisible. Darien grimaced and quicksilvered his eyes, finally seeing her as a glowing figure.

"Elena..."

"¿Qué es este?" he saw her hand gesture toward him.

"This is Darien Fawkes, a friend," Maria introduced, noticing his void eye sockets. "Oh my..."

"S'okay, Maria. I just 'see' her better this way."

"You mean..."

"I can see what you can't see when you can't see me."

"What?"

"Say that five times fast," he joked.

"What he's trying to say is that he can see you when the visible light is reflected off of you, Elena. He can see in higher spectrums when his eyes are quicksilvered," It was Arnaud's voice, and Elena let herself return to sight, and Darien's vision went back to normal when the quicksilver left his eyes.

"I knew you'd be behind this," he remarked.

"Correct. And that isn't a surprise to me, Fawkes. You are very smart you know."

"Mmmm-hmmm. Now, I assume you have a gun on you somewhere."

"Correct again," he pulled it out of his lab coat and cocked it.

The warehouse side door open slowly but loudly, and Hobbes and Claire were spotted. Hobbes had his gun out and Claire was holding a hand on her tranquilizer gun.

"Lose the piece, shorty," Arnaud motioned to Hobbes with his own gun. Hobbes dropped it on the floor. "And, sweetheart, fire that dart of yours and I fire at your head. Now get those two, Elena," Arnaud ordered Elena, and she obliged, a slow grin spreading on her face.

"WAIT!" Darien stepped in front of her and held his hands up in a sign of surrender.

"Ignore him. He just wants to manipulate you into trusting him," Arnaud waved his semi-automatic in the air. "Like you did to her?"

"Mr. Fawkes, do you honestly think she'll believe you?"

Darien grinned again, creating a slow process of quicksilvering as he stepped backward. "Oh, yeah I do."

Elena seemed perplexed, weighing in the fact that her sister was on the other side, and that Arnaud had become somewhat her friend was on another side. And the fact that someone else could do what she could was on her sister's side. Confused, she vanished herself and walked toward Darien.

"Señor, I believe that I have a mind of my own, and right now, you're confusing me, and I don't appreciate it," Darien saw her reach for Hobbes' gun on the floor. Not only was Arnaud being stupid, but the dark guards behind him were armed to the teeth, and it wouldn't be too hard to take a little trinket off of them.

Maria chewed her lower lip and slowly reached for the gun tucked away behind her jacket. She was the Nemesis, the woman of vengeance and justice, and she wasn't about to be defeated by some psycho who basically destroyed her sister's livelihood. Oh, was he going to pay.

"THAT'S IT!" she impatiently yanked the gun out and open fired on them, the guards jolting to alert with gun fire of their own. Outside, lightning flashed and an ear-cracking peal of thunder ripped apart the skies, the sounds of hard rain pinging on the warehouse roof. It shortly distracted one of the guards.

She hit one of them, and he fell to the hard concrete with a hard thud, his blood collecting underneath him. The other was entirely persistent on using his body as a weapon, attacking her from the side. She heard Elena squeal, and for a split second she glanced to her left to see her sister being held around the neck by Arnaud with his gun at her temple. Surely Darien could handle it. She sidestepped from her attacker's axe-kick and hopped behind him, her arms locking around his neck in a sleeper hold. He struggled for a few long seconds, and then went limp in her iron grip. She let him drop and began searching him for anything she could use to destroy all the information that this Arnaud guy had copied, and she found the lovely little gem of hers on his shoulder-strap. One small hand-grenade. Maria turned to tell Claire to find her laptop, but when she didn't see her she could only assume that she had already gone to get it.

"FAWKES! I know you're in here! If you try to save this girl I'll have to do the only thing I can!"

Darien appeared directly in front of him and glared as hard as he could at the Swiss, his eyes were turning into that familiar bloodshot pattern. He held up his monitor for Arnaud to see and smiled without humor. All but one of the snake's segments was red, and Darien appeared to be biting his tongue in pain.

"How'd you like to deal with you worst nightmare?"

Arnaud laughed and shook his head, pulling out the counteragent and biting the cap off of it. "I don't think I'll get a chance to deal with it, Fawkes." Still holding his arm around Elena's neck, he shoved the needle into Darien's chest, pushing the fluid into his bloodstream. The redness dissipated from Darien's deep brown eyes, and he yelled out loud, attacking Arnaud with gusto, causing him to let go of Elena.

Maria rushed to her sister and wrapped her arms protectively around her. Hobbes had come from an opposite corner, the other guard was lying on the floor where he had been. Darien was still trying to pulverize Arnaud, and Claire was rushing up a stairwell, her laptop clutched to her chest.

"DARIEN!" she yelled, showing him the laptop. He growled, smacked Arnaud's nose with the heel of his hand, and stood up from the unconscious body.

Maria held up the grenade and motioned for them to leave. Everyone but her rushed out and were still running when she pulled the firing pin and dropped it into the stairwell, running as fast as she could to get out of the blast area.

Less than two seconds after she had cleared the warehouse doors, it exploded in a bright orange fireball, dropping shrapnel everywhere.

Part 5:

"A job well done," The Official complemented, walking into the crowded Lab.

They all nodded in acknowledgment, and Claire pulled the counteragent needle from Elena's arm. It was going to be too hard for her to be the keeper of TWO invisible people. Elena had either been showing signs of quicksilvermadness or signs of tissue rejection of the gland. She was basically suffering more than she should have been.

"Are you feeling any better, Elena?" Maria asked her sister.

"Not really. My head feels as if it's going to explode. I don't think I can take it anymore."

"Well, Elena, it looks like I'm going to have to run a few scans on you to see what the gland is doing," Claire informed, helping her stand and ushering her to Lab 2.

"I don't think this can turn out good," Darien warned.

Maria bristled. "If she dies...and if that Arnaud survived, I'll have a serious bone to pick with him."

"He has a way of coming back from the dead...and killing siblings," Darien's eyes darkened.

"Then we may both have a reason to kill him?"

"Yeah."

******************************

"Elena?" Claire approached her bedside. The woman was suffering so much that she couldn't turn her head to face her. "I have some bad news."

Elena tried to nod but her pains wouldn't allow it.

"The gland is trying to detach from your brain-stem, and I fear it's killing you."

A silent tear rolled down her quivering cheek.

"I don't think you'll last the rest of the day. We can have Maria say goodbye, and I can give you some meds that'll make you fall asleep, and you won't feel a thing when you die."

Elena mouthed the word "yes" and took Claire's hand to squeeze it.

"I'll be back with her in a few minutes. Stay calm and remember we'll all be here for you when it happens. I don't think it would be right for you to die alone."

******************************

Claire entered the Lab in a hurry, grabbing Maria and explaining what was going on. Nemesis was at a complete loss for words, burying her head into the nearby chest of Darien and sobbing. He comforted her, hugging her closer and letting her cry as much as she needed to in his arms. Arnaud was definitely going to pay for this all.

******************************

Claire opened Lab 2's door and pulled a vial of meds from the refrigerator and filling a needle with it. Maria was crying again, and Hobbes and Darien were holding her up from falling to the floor in distress, their strong arms underneath her armpits.

"Elena, I'll kill him if he isn't dead already. I swear to you that vengeance will be mine. Remember, I am the Nemesis. Yo te amo, mi heramanita."

Elena mouthed the words back to her older sister and more tears slid down her cheeks. She held back her sobs because of the pain.

Darien gave her a few words of comfort and brushed his quicksilvered hand lightly over her forehead, and Hobbes merely smiled at her and told her to know that she would be remembered even though he didn't know her. Darien felt a slight connection to her because of the gland, but he also wanted her to feel more comfortable at her time of death. Claire squeezed her hand in reassurance and gently slid the small needle into her arm.

A heavy, sleepy feeling enveloped Elena, and her eyelids closed quietly. Her breath became less and less audible, and a slow smile of peacefulness and death crept onto her face. Maria collapsed to the tiled floor and cried until her throat was raw and her eyes were too dry to give any more tears. Darien lifted her from the floor and cradled her in his arms once more.

******************************

It was too fast for someone to die. Claire had later discovered that the gland had not only been rejected from her brain from having the operation done so fast, but once it had completely detached from the brain stem, it flooded her brain cavity with quicksilver, depriving her brain of the oxygen it needed. Arnaud knew the consequences of speeding up the recovery with the meds because it was in Claire's notes- speeding up the recovery process may have been the very thing that caused Elena's death- and still, it did kill her, and he was going to pay for his murder. Maria Nemesis wasn't going to allow him to get away with it.

******************************

Maria put her car in park and stepped out by the blown up warehouse, her only companion was Darien, and he jogged for the wreckage before she could suggest what to do. He tore apart the remaining siding while Maria began searching for footprints in the dried mud.

"He's not here!" Darien yelled to her from under the pile of metal.

"I noticed. These are his boot tracks," she motioned for him to come see what she was staring at, and he lurched from the charred building remains and speed walked to stand next to her.

"See the way it turned a bit at the heels? He hit the ground running. And he went toward the park," Maria pointed to the group of trees to the north, and they began a search by foot.

******************************

Claire sat down on her desk by the phone, knowing that if Darien was going to do what she thought he would, she'd need the counteragent and she'd need to get where they were fast. The Official had ordered Hobbes home, and her only company was Eberts, sitting silently on the edge of Darien's chair.

"Do you think they'll get him?" he asked.

"Knowing Maria, I'm positive they will."

Eberts sighed and turned to stare at the Lab animals.

******************************

"He stopped here," Maria pointed to the footprints. "Either that or he took his shoes off. I'm not sure he ever knew I was an expert tracker before he took my sister as a candidate for the gland."

Darien stooped to the bushes next to the prints and picked through it, pulling out Arnaud's boots. "I guess he took 'em off."

Maria sighed and got on her knees, searching every particle of dirt for disturbance. If he was wearing socks, there'd be a distinct pattern to look for, and she found it.

"There. He's still going straight. Darien, go up ahead of me and look around for anything else he may have left behind. I'll catch up with you soon."

Darien nodded. "When we do find him, who gets him first?" he asked.

"We both do. You say he killed your brother, he killed my sister, I'd say we both have a good enough reason to finish him at the same time. Now go."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," he glanced quickly at the angle of the faint sock print and walked a bit to the left but still straight ahead.

******************************

Darien dropped to his knees every so often to glance at the fuzzy prints. Arnaud was still heading for the creek about a yard or two ahead of him. Now it was going to get a bit tricky. Hopping over the slow creek, Darien examined the opposite side for any more defined prints in the dirt. He didn't see any at all.

"MARIA!!! YOU BETTER C'MERE!"

******************************

Maria looked up from checking and rechecking her pistol toward the voice. Darien had either found him before her, or something went wrong. She ran toward the direction his voice came from and almost fell into the creek when she came to him.

"He went either downstream or upstream," Darien announced.

"I'll go up."

"I'll go down."

They looked at each other a second before splitting up.

******************************

It was almost dark before Maria caught sight of Arnaud out cold in the middle of the creek, his face pointing toward the sky. She pursed her lips and pulled out her pistol, jogging a bit downstream before calling out to Darien so she wouldn't wake the murderer. When he didn't answer, Maria walked down further and saw him purposefully quicksilvering.

"Darien?"

"I want him to deal with what he did to me. It's his fault that I go insane if I don't get the counteragent. Just keep your hand on speed dial for Claire's number."

"Darien, he's asleep in the middle of the creek. Upstream about 30 yards." she laid a hand on his shoulder and felt him shudder a bit. "This'll be simple. Scare the mierda out of him and then take him in. Darien, if we kill him, we'll be no better."

He took in her words and chewed on them a bit before nodding and checking his tattoo. "Well, I got one left anyway," he jerked his head to try and get rid of the sharp pain that was beginning in back there.

He jogged a bit ahead of Maria and when he stopped in front of Arnaud's figure, he snorted.

"What?"

"He almost looks dead. It's a bit fitting, don't you think?"

Maria chuckled. "Let's wake him up."

Being careful, Darien stepped on one of the algae covered rocks near Arnaud's head and rested one of his feet on his chest, hopefully crushing his ribs while putting as much weight as he could on that foot.

"Oh, Arnaud," Maria crooned. Darien jerked a bit in more pain. QSM was inevitable for him.

"Arnaud...WAKE UP!!!" she pistol-whipped him across the face- he cried out and tried to sit up.

"Uh uh uh...I don't think you're going anywhere."

"Get off me, Fawkes."

"You know what? I'd rather just crush your ribs," he stepped harder.

"Darien, let him stand up. I want him to see something," Maria indicated his eyes in the dark, and he nodded.

Arnaud heaved out of the dirty water and tried to run, but Maria cocked her pistol, causing him to stop in his tracks.

"Move any farther in that direction, and I shoot your head clear off."

He turned around with his hands in the air and walked toward her.

"That's better. Now here's what I wanted you to see," she turned a small flashlight that she had in her boot on and pointed it at Darien's eyes. He was fighting the pain so much that his lip was bleeding from biting it hard. Slowly, Arnaud glanced up to look in Darien's eyes, turning into a frightened child when he saw how demonic and crazed they looked.

Darien's head felt like it was burning from the inside out and he could barely keep his face from contorting in pain. Arnaud was so frightened that he let out a little squeal.

"Now Fawkes..."

"Oh, he's gone," Darien's voice was so calm that it seemed hypnotizing. "And he really hates you for killing his brother and his friend's sister. So I think I'll do him a favor...and...kill you."

"Oh no...no...no...no...I-I..."

"Remind him to thank me later, Maria."

Arnaud let out an inhuman scream as Darien advanced, his hands curved into claws of iron that itched to wrap around Arnaud's throat. Behind him, Maria dialed Claire's number and told her what to expect when she came.

******************************

Her timing was impeccable. Claire arrived just as Arnaud fainted away from the shock of it all, and just before Darien killed him, jabbing him in the neck with the long, harpoon of a needle filled with the counteragent. Maria cuffed Arnaud and pulled him to his feet to slap him back to being conscious. They drove back to the Agency and showed off their capture, then they handed him over to the police, and he was put in a holding cell pending trial.

No one knew how he ever escaped, but he left a note for Darien.

*Fawkes-

I know you're now wondering how I could have gotten away so easily, but it was this neat little trick I learned from watching you. You know, they really shouldn't let guards just carry around pens while on duty...

Yours hatefully,

Arnaud *

After reading it, Darien crumpled the note up and cursed. He'd get him again another day...

******************************

For now, Claire replaced her patio window and installed a security system. Hopefully that would help for the NEXT time this happened. Maria was offered the chance to work at the Agency, but she couldn't decide what to do- work as a bounty hunter and get paid low wages, or work as an agent and get low wages... She decided to opt for the latter since Darien sort of goaded her into it. It would be nice to have the Nemesis on the job when someone else was in need.

The End