Sitting in the chair next to his sleeping daughter, Colin carefully lifted the jar in his hands, feeling like it contained the weight of the world. Inside was a tiny ladybug who was also a hypnosite and most importantly, his wife. For her first meal, he fed her aphids and small frozen crumbles of her own human brain. He hoped it would bring back her memory sooner. He stored the rest of her brain in the deep freeze, keeping it in a butcher’s wax paper and wrapped in caution tape so nobody mistakenly committed cannibalism.

  After her meal, Kristy expanded into a chrysalis and he could feel her contented resting. He was thankful she was alive, but he worried that she’d be missing a piece of her like he sometimes felt about himself. At first, he was concerned that the hypnosite wasn’t prepped for her and would reject her, but with his and Jenny’s guidance, it seemed like the process went smoothly.

  It should be easy to find yourself thankful that your wife is alive and while it was true that he felt grateful, there was far more anger inside of him. All he wanted to do was track Chuck and Merrin down and erase them from this world. He tried to spare them and that decision almost cost him his wife.

  Colin tucked his jarred wife into a fanny pack so he could keep her close, then he double checked to make sure Jenny was still asleep, then left the room where Jenny and he were staying and crossed the hall to where Officer Higgins was taking care of the only surviving FBI agent, Ellen.

  “How’s she doing?” Collin said.

  “I think she’ll be okay, but I’m no doctor. It looks like he didn’t do anything to hurt her too bad, but she was terrified. The feds should be sending someone to chopper her out soon,” Higgins said, kneeling on the floor next to Ellen, who was resting on his bed.

  “Did she tell you anymore about what Chuck wanted from her?” Colin asked

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  He shook his head and shrugged, “Just repeating more of the same stuff about him, asking where his body was and telling her to have them destroy it. She seemed pretty shaken up.”

  “Why would he want to destroy his human body? I remember Kristy telling me about how he used to cough up blood and needed hers and my family’s blood, but I don’t get why he would want to destroy his body.”

  “You said he felt incomplete, right? Do you think it has anything to do with his human body still being alive?” Higgins suggested, “He seemed pretty fanatical about evolving.”

  Colin nodded along. That line of reasoning made sense in a weird, mad scientist type of way. If he had the option to return to his original self and do the same for Kristy, he would choose that in a heartbeat, but Chuck wasn’t him and he was obsessed with hypnosites. “That makes plenty of sense. Either way, we know that he wants his body destroyed, and I want to pay him back for what he and Merrin did to Kristy.”

  “Well if you hurt Chuck, you hurt Merrin, but it’s the weirdest type of revenge I’ve ever heard of to keep somebody alive.” Higgins said while scratching his head.

  “That’s not what I actually had in mind,” Colin said, “If he’s so in love with hypnosites and hates his own body so much, I figured why not trap him inside of his old body?”

  “How the hell are you gonna do that?”

  “I’m not too sure, but when I first started the experiments, Chuck was able to play a frequency that sent me out of the hypnosite back into my own body. I know where his lab is, and I have the passcode to get through all of the doors since Merrin gave them to me. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to take a look around his lab for any notes about how to send a hypnosite back into its original body.”

  Higgins shook his head then glance at the sleeping Ellen. He leaned closer to Colin and lowered his voice, “That’s no good. Remember, Holly told us that the feds seized all of his research? I doubt they left something that valuable in the lab. Maybe I could ask Holly to look into it. She’s still on the team.”

  “She’s asleep. I can feel it,” Colin said, but still followed suit and lowered his voice, “If the notes and Chuck’s body are with the FBI, then I’m gonna go to their headquarters. We know Chuck’s heading there eventually and I have a way to beat him to it.”

  “You ate some crazy fast bird recently?” Higgins asked.

  Colin shook his head and smiled, “Better than that. I’ve got a helicopter that’ll take me straight there.”