"Believe it or not, it does not matter to me. Personally, he brought me in on your case and when he explained that they had left you, that you had been unable to be debriefed- it intrigued me, Mr. Tyler. As I was once a debriefer, you must understand- I never had a man that I didn’t crack…" Brabon had resumed his examination, his voice challenging Rollie as if he wanted to try him as well.

"You’re a bloody psycho, Doc," Rollie remarked, pushing his hand away again, "and I’ve had enough of this underground pool of wackos trying to get inside my head. Get a life- don’t you have a family or something?"

Brabon looked at him curiously, tilting his head to one side;

"Don’t know…maybe. It’s been thirty years since I was picked up and brought into this world. I can’t go back. Just like Michael- we are doomed to just roam now. Well, me alone now…Michael has found his peace," Brabon commented and then had Rollie follow his finger through motion exercises.

"You’re fine. I believe you can have perfect vision for the rest of your life, Mr. Tyler. You will get use to the night vision in total darkness. Who knows, it may come in handy, yes?" Brabon asked, as he put away his wand.

"If Michael is dead, I would like to tell his wife. Let her see the body. Let us all see this for real," Rollie told him, in a demanding voice.

"Ah, well- check downtown at the central morgue, Mr. Tyler. His body is most certainly in there by now."

Rollie swallowed hard, not wanting to hear this. Brabon sounded so calm, unaffected- like he had swatted a fly.

"What’s it like, Brabon? To live in your world? Why did you even do this surgery?" Rollie asked then, as the doctor stood up, slowly and started to smile.

"Why, I owed him a favor, of course. There are still manners and protocol in this shadow world, you know. Have a nice life, Mr. Tyler…" Brabon waved him off and walked out of the door, never looking back.

Rollie got out of bed, pulling out his IV. He wanted some decent food, his wife and his son. He wanted to go home.

Angie had already fed Aidan at six that morning. She was back in her room, packing her things when Rollie walked in and smiled at her before she realized he was there.

"Hi there, Mrs. Tyler," he said softly and she turned around, her mouth opened wide as she came over and embraced him.

Angie looked up at him and could see that he was looking and feeling one hundred percent better.

"I was just about to check out of this place," she told him and stopped, sitting down in the chair as he sat across from her, on the bed.

"Not without me!" he warned her.

"Really, you can go too?"

"Brabon is gone- I received all those great amino acids and the protein swill they made me drink and am feeling great! Yeah, I decided I was going…" he told her then, winking and she smiled, knowing that he was on the loose, not officially sprung by the trauma attending who had admitted him.

"They are letting me know at the 10 A.M. feeding when Aidan can come home…" Angie added and then suddenly stood up, "hey, what are we waiting for? You need to see your son for the first time, come on!"

Rollie was a little apprehensive. He had held Aidan, rocked him and been with him but not seen him. Angie had said he looked like him and her. Rollie tried to map that perception out in image in his mind and what kind of man that he would become. He decided he would take one day at a time as he felt Angie’s hand take his and they left her room.

As they took the elevator to the NICU, he told her what Brabon had said about Michael. She shivered and looked up at him strangely;

"I think he is right, Rollie…" she said, eerily as Rollie felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

"Sometimes you give me the heebie-jeebies, Angie!" he told her as she stepped off the elevator first.

"Good, keeps you in line- and never, never again will you go traipsing off with someone, for the fun of it, you hear?" Angie warned him as he smiled and pulled at her hair, which she had pulled back in a loose clip.

"All this hair, it’s like a new you," he remarked as she looked up at him and scoffed;

"I’ve been thinking about chopping it all off again, like you would notice."

"I would- and I like it long, Ange, you’re a gorgeous mum now!"

She shook her head and they rounded the corner expecting to hear the familiar sound of the thirty or so monitors all beeping at once, the sounds of the routine, daily care. But what they heard was the sound of an errant alarm and there were a lot of people, a code team surrounding a crib up near the front of the unit. Aidan’s crib was close to the nurse’s station and Angie couldn’t see his crib for the people. She panicked as Rollie tried to keep up with her.

Pushing through the people, without an apology, Angie frantically came up to the crib, watching in horror as the doctor placed tiny paddles on the chest, shouting for the nurse to hit the defibrillator again.

"No!" she screamed, but Rollie was watching something else, another set of parents who stood huddled together, holding each other in the corner, the woman crying uncontrollably.

"Angie, sweetie, come back over here," he told her, pulling her back as she fought him initially. He had to physically hold on to both shoulders as he made her see- that the baby in the crib wasn’t Aidan and that their son was somewhere else.

"Mr. and Mrs. Tyler? Oh, no! We moved Aidan after your feeding him around seven this morning to the well nursery. He’s fine. They were suppose to tell you- I called your floor," the nurse said calmly, who had been helping her since his birth.

Angie trembled slightly. She hadn’t realized how affected, how utterly out of control she had felt when she had thought that Aidan had been in that crib. Rollie took her hand as the nurse led them by the code team and the grieving parents. Angie looked back again, watching them hold each other so lost in their child’s failed effort for life and she got sick to her stomach.

"I have to throw up," she said as the nurse whisked her around into the closest place with a sink, a scrub sink outside of the NICU. Rollie stood there, holding her as she vomited- the nurse running to get a towel and washcloth.

"It’s okay, sweetie…it’s okay…" he kept saying to her as the nurse put the cool cloth to her forehead and she wiped her face as Angie reeled backward into Rollie who held her in his arms.

"Better get a chair, quick!" he told the nurse who had already suspected that she would need it. Pushing a chair forward, they sat Angie down as Rollie kneeled beside the chair, holding her in his arms.

"You okay now?" he asked, as she rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"Oh God, sorry about that…it was just so overwhelming and yet, I don’t understand why I still feel so…I mean Aidan isn’t even here!" Angie said, stammering as Rollie wiped her mouth with the cloth and held her.

"Once you feel better, we’ll go up to the well nursery, okay?" he asked her.

She nodded her head in agreement and signaled to him finally that she was ready to get up and move. Standing and holding on to him, they walked slowly back down the hall to the elevator.

"I’m sorry, I don’t know why I reacted so strangely in there," Angie told Rollie as he hugged her in the elevator.

"Not to worry, love. You have an incredible mother’s protective instinct! I can see that!" he told her, grinning as he pushed back a lock of her straying hair from her face.

They moved slowly down the hall toward the regular nursery and looked through the glass, smiling at the number of babies in various stages of sleep or wakeful activity.

"Okay, where is he?" Rollie asked, eager as they stood there, noses almost pressed against the glass.

"Close," she murmured and looked down at herself, she was leaking through her nursing bra as Rollie noticed and raised his eyebrows.

"It’s like the call of the wild!" he said, chuckling as she rolled her eyes;

"Yeah, embarrassing if you’re out in public. I already ruined one of Francis’ suit jackets so don’t laugh too much."

Angie scanned the entire room looking for Aidan. He wasn’t there. Nervously, she tapped on the glass at one of the nurses who met her then at the door.

"I’m Angie Tyler, my son Aidan was brought up here from the neonatal intensive care unit this morning. I’m here for the 10 A.M. feeding," she told her.

The nurse frowned and checked her transfer log. She then walked over to several other nurses at the station and they shook their heads as well.

Angie’s feeling of doom flooded her head as she grabbed Rollie’s hand and waited;

"Mrs. Tyler, we didn’t receive any transfers this morning from NICU. I think you had better go back downstairs and find out exactly who transferred your son and I’ll call administration just to check on transfer orders, okay?" the nurse told her as her face registered her confusion.

"Listen, we are being shunted from one place to the other, we want our son!" Rollie said, demandingly as his voice filled with alarm. He believed in Angie’s feelings and the fact that she had become physically ill downstairs was now perceived as an urgent sign of things to come.

Angie was already pulling at Rollie; "Come on, let’s go!" she told him as they moved quickly back down the hall. Even though the strain of running was causing her pain, Angie hardly felt it as they made their way back to the NICU. The code team had gone, the crib was empty. Angie looked for the nurse that had helped her, the one that had been with her since Aidan had been born.

"Please! I am looking for my son, Aidan Tyler. The nurse who has been here taking care of him for the past week, told me that he was transferred to the well nursery. We have just been there and they never got him!" Angie told the head nurse at the station, her voice raised and breathless.

Rollie was scanning the room. Had the code team and the crying parents been a smoke screen? He mind was racing with wild thoughts as he watched Angie talking with the staff.

"I’m calling administration," he heard the head nurse tell Angie as he watched his wife put her hands firmly on the console of the station, holding herself steady. He came up behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

"Angie, God help us, what the bloody hell is going on?" he said to her, as she turned to him suddenly and with a steady voice through clenched teeth said;

"He’s not here. He never made it to the nursery. They can’t find the nurse that has been here all week."

Panic seized Rollie and held him captive. He couldn’t seem to think as the sudden image of the light, and the room filled his mind. He was hearing their voices, the debriefers challenging him, demanding him to tell them things.

"Rollie?" It was the sound of someone calling his name mixed in with the sea of all their voices, asking him, shouting at him, whispering…

"Rollie, don’t go there," he heard her say, strong and clear and he focused- the light gone, the voices faded as he looked down at Angie’s face. It was the one thing that made him center and leave the frenzy of his mind.

"Angie…" he started to say and she smiled then, bravely as her eyes brimmed with tears.

"Mr. and Mrs. Tyler, we are searching now. We have called administration and the police. Please come over here and sit down. We can try to piece this together with them," the head nurse told them, trying to be calm herself but they could both see that she was extremely upset.

"I’m calling Mira and Francis!" Angie said, asking for the phone. Rollie watched as Angie seemed to take charge of the situation while he could barely function. He felt totally useless and strange. A return shock of brilliant light filled his mind's eye then, as he gripped the arms of the chair and rode the sea of voices again. He reached out, feeling for the edges of comfort, his cell but his arms were clawing at air.

Angie could see, even in her panic for Aidan, that something was terribly wrong with Rollie. He was having some sort of post traumatic event and she didn’t know what to do. Rollie had mentioned that a psychiatrist had tried to see him the first day they had brought him in and she wonder if he could help Rollie now. With all that was going on, she didn’t know what else to do.

There were people everywhere now, as they moved Rollie and Angie to a quiet room down the hall. Police were working with hospital administration. They had found the nurse who had been with Angie and Aidan all week. She had taken a break and knew nothing further about the transfer except someone from the nursery had picked up the baby. She had become upset as well, wondering if she had handed the baby over to the abductor without realizing it.

Mira and Francis arrived within the first half-hour. Mira went into a command mode as Francis coordinated with the hospital staff and responding police precinct. Through all of the flurry of activity and check-ins, Angie sat, holding Rollie’s hand. The psychiatrist finally arrived, and when Rollie wouldn’t let go of her hand so that she could talk to him alone, the doctor just told her to sit and talk to him with Rollie present. He told her that his work had been with prisoners of war and torture victims and that David Grant had originally contacted him when Rollie had been brought in. The mention of Michael’s alias didn’t phase Angie at this point. If this man was as good as Michael thought, she was not going to stand in his way.

"Rollie, all the lights on, aren’t they?" asked the psychiatrist, calmly but firmly.

"Yeah…they are one light. I can’t see, they are asking over and over again. I want my son!" he shouted out, blinking and not really seeing Angie or the doctor in the room.

Angie felt the intensified grip on her hand, it was beginning to hurt incredibly as she looked to the psychiatrist for help.

"Rollie, I want you to relax, I want you to go ahead and just fall. Let it go. You won’t hit bottom. There is no bottom. Concentrate on my voice…"

Rollie’s grip lessened and Angie was able to slide her hand out, looking down at the swelling that was beginning. Rollie had broken several bones in her hand, she could feel that. She stood up, seeing that the psychiatrist had at least calmed him down and stepped out into the hall.

"Help me!" she cried out, wincing in pain as Mira rushed over to her. Several of the hospital staff came to her aid as a doctor was called to examine her hand. With ice applied, she sat outside, waiting as they told her she would need x-rays. She refused them for the time being. With the ice and her mind scrambled with reoccurring thoughts of terror for both Aidan and Rollie, she couldn’t relax and she wouldn’t leave.

A group of men arrived and talked first with the hospital administration and then to Mira who seemed visibly shaken by what they were saying to her. They then, approached Angie who sank her hand again in the basin of ice provided.

"Angie, these are Agents from the NSA, and I believe, some are CIA as well," snapped Mira as several men shifted and frowned at Mira for decloaking them.

One tall man stepped forward and looked down at her, his demeanor almost demanding as he questioned her.

"Mrs. Tyler, I’m going to need to know why you let a supposed doctor without medical privileges operate on your husband, a man who put in implants that are not approved by the FDA- a man that is wanted in more than one country, including this one for high treason."

"Agent- whatever your name is," Angie replied, her pain and the recent events giving her a crusty, no nonsense edge, "I don’t know who he was really…Doctor Brabon or Jack the Ripper…but he gave my husband back his sight. Something that you guys took away from him. I don’t trust any of you!"

"WE did not abduct your husband or your child, Mrs. Tyler. We are concerned about one Johann Brabon and his activities here. We believe your child’s abduction may have something to do with this as well."

"Great! Then, go get him boys, because frankly, I am getting very tired of all of you and your games. I want my son back- pure and simple. I want my husband back, mind and all, understand? I don’t care what faction or what agency you say you are from, I just want results!" she answered, her voice low and angry.

Mira was sitting down beside her now, a hand on Angie’s arm. The man that had been talking looked at Mira, shaking his head.

"Your ex-husband, Michael Sanchez, alias Michael Lopez, alias David Grant, alias John Balsario- do you know where he is?"

Mira smiled; "No, but I am impressed that you have been keeping up with his aliases, Agent?"

"Brant," replied the man, leaning over to face her closer, "and he is wanted as well, you know."

Mira nodded and shrugged her shoulders.

"He’s dead!" Angie said, flatly, "Brabon told my husband this morning that Michael had been terminated last night late- that his body would be down at the central morgue."

Mira looked over at Angie in shock. Angie looked at her with red-rimmed eyes and murmured a whispered "sorry".

"Your husband, Rollie Tyler- where is he?" the agent asked, not particularly surprised at Angie’s declaration about Michael.

"In there, with the psychiatrist. He is having trouble dealing with his abduction by you guys, his blindness inflicted by torture and oh yeah, whoever took our child!" Angie yelled out suddenly, standing up, her hand visibly still swollen and red.

"Yeah, Kholler is in there," said another man, behind the main agent who had been interrogating them, "he was called in from the get-go."

"So, the shrink is one of yours too, perfect!" Angie said, and without further comment, walked back into the quiet room only to find the psychiatrist Kholler on the floor, a bullet wound to the temple with a small caliber bullet entry. The other door had been left ajar leading to a hallway behind the NICU, a back elevator for laundry just closing its door.

"What the hell is going on, Mira?" Angie asked, her knees weak as now, both the men in her life had suddenly vanished. Mira took her good hand and held onto her as the squad of agents combed the room and ran out into the hallway behind the quiet room.

"Hang on Angie- I gotta tell you, to me, it could only mean one thing," Mira said, her warm, brown eyes meeting Angie’s reddened eyes.

"Michael?"

Mira nodded and looked down at the body of the psychiatrist that the agents had identified as Kholler. From what she had heard about the CIA official that had been killed earlier in Washington, the killing had been similar- a small caliber bullet to the temple. It was Michael’s standard operating hit.