Jonathan’s heart was beating furiously as he fled down the dusty side street. He didn’t stop to look behind, but he knew that that man with the gun wasn’t far behind. He had no idea where he was going. Desperate, he turns down another side street and stops. Oh God, he’s except for what a scattering of buildings he’s reached what seems to be the end of town. A few parked cars and weathered signs that he didn’t understand was the only sign of life.
Jonathan thinks quickly and slides underneath one of the parked cars. The smell of dirt and oil is pretty revolting, but Jonathan doesn’t notice. He holds his breath and makes a giant wish as footsteps sound near his hiding spot.
Hoping that the man won’t notice him, Jonathan stays as still and silent underneath the car as he can.
He knows that this man will kill him as easily as he killed the hotel manager. As easily as they killed Sean.
Jonathan wants his mom. He doesn’t want to be a baby and at six he’s too old to cry for his mother, but he can’t help thinking that everything would be okay if she was there. But she isn’t. So he holds his breath and hopes.
The footsteps sound near him. Jonathan hears a ringing in his ears. At first he thinks its an echo from his heart but then he realizes its a phone. The man’s phone.
“Kennedy.” The man answers the phone. “What? An explosion? Okay, is Jacob there? No sign. All right, don’t panic. Have the men enact the crisis plan. Find Mrs. Cassadine and get her out of there. No, shoot the prisoners. They’re too much trouble to transport to Base 2. And let me know when Jacob shows up. And I want some back up sweepers in town. I think I may have found the kid. He was with Spencer and the sweeper team missed him.”
The man stops speaking and Jonathan waits. After a minute he hears footprints walking away. From his vantage point under the car, he can’t see anyone around. Cautiously, Jonathan slides out from under the car. Brushing off the dirt, he tries to figure out his next move when he hears a click and freezes.
“Well hello young Cassadine,” the man whispers as Jonathan turns around to face the barrel of a gun aimed straight at him. “I know someone who would very much like to meet you.”
Jonathan has no idea what’s talking about or why the man would call him Cassadine, but he knows better than to argue with a man carrying a very big gun who isn’t afraid of using it. Swallowing the lump of fear in his throat, Jonathan goes in the direction the man points. Helena’s Compound:
It took 30 minutes and Lucky has lost track of the number of Helena’s men they’ve had to shoot and possibly kill, but he and Luke are finally clear of the compound and making their way the half mile walk to where Jason and Luke hid the van.
“What the hell was he doing?” Lucky thought to himself. He didn’t want to be doing this. Every instinct in his body told him that he was going in the wrong direction. Wasn’t trusting your instincts a “real” Spencer rule? He stopped and turned around.
“Where are you going?” Luke asks although he already knows.
“I’m heading back to the compound,” Lucky says as he begins to run.
“Wait,” Luke races after him, grabs his hand, and forces Lucky to stop. “You’re injured.” He motions to Lucky’s head. “You’re in no shape to do this. And you yourself said the room where they were holding Emily was deep underground that complex. We were on ground level and barely survived that explosion. I think you have to face facts that Jason and Emily didn’t make it. If they had, we would have seen them by now. “
Lucky’s world stops for a heart beat and starts again. They’ve come too far for him to give up on Emily now. “I have to go back.”
“It’s crazy. You don’t go back into the whale’s mouth after you escape.”
“Would you go if it was Mom?” Lucky asks.
Luke sighs.
“In a heartbeat.” He begins but he’s wasting his breath. Lucky is already racing back to the compound. After taking a moment to check the ammunition in his weapon, Luke follows.
“Think of it as target practice,” Emily says to herself as she aims the gun. “Don’t think of them as people. Pretend your twelve again and playing video games with Sly and Lucky. On second thought, try not to think of Lucky.” She aims the weapon and shoots and another guard goes down. Emily fails to stop a grin. She always was good at those kinds of games.
“Jason,” she yells up the stairway to her brother. “There’s more coming and I don’t think I can do this forever.”
“You’re doing great Em,” Jason groans as he push at the large chunk of debris that is blocking their passage. They’ve made it this far and he finds it impossible to believe that they won’t make it further” He knows that if he only moves this one piece, the rest will topple down. He can tell by the bits of light fighting their way through, that they have finally reached the top of the stair case.” The trouble is, with his arm broken in the building collapse, he can’t put as much pressure on it as he would like it.
“Em, I need your help.”
“Hang on!” Em climbs the flight of stairs to where Jason is carefully and backwards, her gun up and ready just in case.
“Here give me that,” Jason grabs the gun. “Let’s see what these things are good for besides killing people.” He jams the gun in the narrow space between the large chunk and the surrounding pieces, trying to use it as a lever. The debris moves a little but only ends up further wedged in.
“Damn,” Jason swears. He knows that they can’t turn around and go back, there are too many of Helena’s men who are beginning to recover from the collapse. The only thing that let them get this far was the fact that the explosion knocked out the power generator taking the security system and the cameras off line.
He begins to remove the gun from where its lodged when an idea comes to him. Telling Emily to get back, Jason pulls the trigger while the gun is still in the crevice. The force of the pressure pushes the chunk back causing the entire pile of debris to collapse.
Emily looks at him in amazement.
“I guess it’s true. You really can shoot your way out of any situation.”
Jason allows himself a grin. The fresh air feels good. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Jason helps her as they both make their way through the debris. They soon clear the perimeter and start to make their way gingerly across the grounds, hiding behind bushes and a parked car when Helena’s men near. Finally they reach a fairly dense area of vegetation just inside of the fence. The shrub pines and other native bushes are packed tightly together and in the evening light everything casts a shadow. They can hear the sirens from the compound and the sound of feet running everywhere. Emily’s nerves are taut. She guesses they are no more than fifty feet from the fence, which thanks to Luke and Jason’s earlier maneuverings is not as formidable as it once was. She raises the gun she’s holding and slightly cocks the trigger. Jason does the same.
Emily moves around a shrub with Jason behind her guarding the rear. She freezes as she hears a noise and her gun automatically goes up. Then she stops.
“Lucky? “ She drops the gun and is in his arms. “You’re alive. I thought. I mean I meant.... You’re alive.” She ends lamely feeling incredibly stupid and embarrassed. All she can think of is those last few minutes when she thought she wouldn’t see him again.
“I’m fine,” He shakes his head. “Are you okay?”
Jason interrupts. “As much as I don’t want to interrupt you two, this little soap opera is going to get very messy very fast if we don’t get out of here.”
Lucky nods. With Lucky in the lead, the three of them make it past the fence and out of the compound.
“Thank God,” Emily whispers as she sinks to the ground in exhaustion and stares at the outside of the compound.
Lucky nods. He wants to tell her how he feels but all he can do is sink in her presence. When they are safe, he vows. He is pulling her to her feet when he sees a flash of metal out of the corner of his eyes.
“Get down,” he yells at her as he knocks her out down and takes the bullet himself.
Jonathan is sitting in the front passenger’s seat as the man drives. His eyes are on the scenery in front of him. But his mind is racing as he tries to figure out what is going on. Where was this guy taking him? To his mother? Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe Lucky hadn’t rescued his mother yet. Maybe this way Lucky could rescue the two of them.
The man’s phone rings again. Jonathan turns in his seat and listens.
“Kennedy. Yeah I got the kid. What’s going on at the compound? We’re about ten minutes away. Okay, move all operations into the outer buildings for the moment. See about getting power back on. Jacob’s dead? Damn.”
“What? That’s bad news. As much as Mrs. Cassadine didn’t want to keep her alive, the kid would have been a lot more controllable if his mother was still alive. Spencer’s dead too? A little bit of good news for Mrs. Cassadine. Yeah we’ll be there ASAP”
Jonathan felt like he had stopped breathing. His mother dead. Dead. Dead. Tears welled up in his eyes. And Lucky dead too. And this man was taking him to the people who killed her. This man was going to kill him too. And then this man would live. Everyone would be dead and this man would live. It wasn’t fair, Jonathan’s mind screamed.
Without thinking about it and before the man named Kennedy could react, Jonathan reached over and pulled the keys out of the ignition and grabbed the wheel.
Kennedy screamed and hit Jonathan across the face, but by the time he regained control it was too late. The gray late model sedan had gone down an embankment and plunged off the cliff. Landing at the bottom, it exploded into flames.
Emily is going to be sick. She is about 100 feet away from the van and she feels like she is going to vomit. Jason and Luke are in the van taking care of Lucky. She wants to be in there too, but she can’t be. Her mind wants to go in but her feet refuse. She closes her eyes and relives it again, the bullet hitting Lucky, the look on his face as he fell. The nightmarish trip to get him in the van. They were forty miles away from the compound before Luke thought it was safe enough to pull over. The wound wasn’t bad, Jason had assured her. But it was still his blood. Still shed because of her. As soon as the van stopped, Emily had ran out of the van, heedless of Jason and Luke’s shouts.
It was all her fault. She had done this. Her stupid idiotic crush on Nikolas had caused all of this. She had hurt herself. She had hurt her son. And now she had hurt Lucky. She should never have come back to Port Charles. She should never have involved other people in her fight against Helena. Stupid Stupid idiot. She whispers to herself. You knew this would happen. You knew that Helena would destroy the people you cared about. She closes her eyes. The people you love. How many times do you have to learn a lesson before you finally get it? Do you get it now, Emily? Do you see how it must be? She closes her eyes again. God, give me the strength to leave him.
“Emily?”
Please give me the strength.
“Lucky?” she turns and there is a bright smile on her face. “You’re okay?”
He points to the bandage around his arm. “Just a flesh wound. I guess I needed something to match the bandana.”
She flinches at the reminder of how close a bullet came to his head. She begins to shiver even in the heat of the Mexican high desert.
“Hey!” Lucky swears softly as he reaches for her and attempts to put his one good hand around her. “We’re all okay. We’re safe.”
Emily buries her face in his chest. For a long moment she lets herself feel the safety of his embrace and the security of his heartbeat.
God give me the strength to leave. But give me this moment first.
Twenty five minutes they return to town. Emily is anxious to see Jonathan again and almost jumps out of the van when it pulls up to the hotel. Lucky follows her and they enter the lobby.
Emily stops. Lucky swears as he recognizes the manager lying in a crimson pool of blood.
Emily’s heart races. Something is wrong. She races up the stairs.
“Which room?” she calls to Lucky who is next to her.
“This way,” he leads her down a darkened hallway and stops. The door is busted open. He turns to Emily. “Wait here.”
“Lucky”
He shakes his head. “Wait here.”
Lucky enters the room. He swears softly as he sees the bullet holes everywhere.
“Oh God.” He swears softly as he spots Sean’s body near the bed. It’s stone cold. With his heart beating, he quickly checks the rest of the room and the bathroom. No sign of Jonathan. Thank God.
He hears a stifled scream from the other room. Emily is staring at the body by the bed. She recognizes Sean Donnelley, her mother’s former lover. Her entire body shaking in fear, Emily turns to Lucky. “Where’s my son? Where’s Jonathan?”
Lucky’s eyes grow a dark blue. “I don’t know Em. I just don’t know.”
He catches her just before she collapses.
