The caravan of four entered the grocery store. It was cold and damp, and not heavily staffed. The only people in sight were three shoppers and a cashier. They were not talking to each other and had hostile looks on their faces.
Peter turned away from the group and looked down one of the aisles. He thought he saw Derby at the other end, but disregarded it, thinking he hit himself on the head too hard in the apartment.
"What is it?" Lindsay asked, noticing the distracted look on his face.
"Nothing." He looked down the aisle once more before moving on.
Anton approached one of the shoppers nearby. There was a man nearby with his back to them, and Lindsay thought there was something vaguely familiar about him. She turned to Anton and the woman, hearing them talking about something.
"Excuse me, ma'am, but do you know what town we're in? My colleagues and I are lost." Anton looked the woman in the eye but immediately looked away, thinking he saw something he didn't want to see.
"Leave me alone, you pervert," was all the woman replied before swearing at him and walking away.
"Okay, scratch her..." Matt said, walking up to the man Lindsay had thought she recognized. "Umm..." he said, getting the man's attention, "do you know where we are?"
The man turned around to face Matt. Lindsay, Anton and Peter gasped, not knowing whether to be happy for who he was or afraid of him.
It was Connor Doyle. 
"What the hell are you doing here?!" Connor asked when he turned to face Matt, seeing the three former members of his team; the team he had had before he had been blown up.
Lindsay said nothing but ran to Connor and gave him a huge hug; she had missed him so much, and still hadn't completely forgiven Peter for leaving him in the factory building more than three years before.
He hugged her back, a malicious glint in his eye. No one seemed to notice, so he let go of her and smiled warmly.
"Lindsay, I missed you so much..." He looked her straight in the eye, and she felt like melting. He was one of the only people who had ever understood her, and she was overjoyed to be with him again. She thought she loved him... and wasn't afraid to admit it.
"What happened to you?" Peter asked, finally getting the nerve to speak. He found it hardest to talk- he had been the last person to speak to Connor before he... died.
"I don't exactly know..." Connor told them, remembering that night so long ago. "I remember you leaving, Peter, then... I blacked out. I woke up here and have lived here ever since. I haven't seen you guys, I guessed you were working, as usual."
Matt didn't know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment. He stood silently while his team reminisced with their old Case Manager.
"What are you doing here? You look like you stepped out of another world."
Peter, Lindsay and Anton looked at him, surprised. Then one of them spoke.
"We seem to have gotten lost. We just showed up here a while ago, and we have no idea where anything is." Anton still didn't believe that could be Connor. He hadn't been there when the plant had blown up with Connor inside, but he knew the chances of surviving that were extremely slim.
"Where are you trying to go?"
"Nowhere, for now."
"We just came for supplies for a while," Matt said, holding up the next-to-empty bag. "I think we should get going."
Connor took a small card out of the pocket of his jeans and wrote something on it, then discreetly passed it to Lindsay. He leaned over to her and whispered 'call me sometime' in her ear. She smiled and nodded, then left after the other, looking over her shoulder before she disappeared around the corner.
"Okay, let's see..." Matt dumped the contents of the black bag. He and his three team workers were sitting on the grass in a park nearby the grocery store. "Knife... matches... newspaper... notepad... pens..." he put everything in order as he said them. "Flashlight... batteries... Coke... bread... peanut butter..."
"No one's arachiutyrophobic, right?" Anton asked, smiling somewhat.
Peter, Lindsay and Matt looked at him quizzically.
"Never mind."
Matt finished assessing their meager possessions and took one of the cans of Coke, opening it and taking a long swig. Peter, who had been nearly asleep sitting between Lindsay and Anton, sat up and requested a can. "So what are we going to do?" he asked, flipping the tab.
"There's not much we can do. I guess we'll have to go back to the apartment and see if we can figure out how to get... home." Matt seemed dubious of their chances of finding their way back home.
Lindsay, who had been absent-mindedly fiddling with the card Connor had giver her, suddenly spoke.
"Maybe Connor can help us."
"Yeah, and maybe the tooth fairy can help us, too. Come on Lindsay, you know there's something wrong here. Remember what Jillian..."
"Derby," Peter interrupted between mouthfuls of Coke.
"Whatever. Remember what she told us in the apartment? She said everything was backwards here for us. Maybe you should take that into consideration."
Lindsay agreed, but couldn't help feeling that he was wrong. "I don't know. He just seems... different. The same as he usually is- was- but different from everyone else."
"We just don't want you to get hurt." Peter looked her straight in the eye. "Even though we have Anton here."
Lindsay couldn't help but smile. "Alright. I'll watch it. I promise."
Everyone went back to what they were doing, which wasn't much. They all basically sat on the grass, trying to think of a plan to get home.
Connor and Derby stood in the open living room in Derby's apartment. They had met previously, and were just mastering their plan. This was going to be good, they thought, and they both snickered venomously to themselves as they thought of their plan. |
