Both had a solemn look on their face, which Corban couldn't count on as a good thing, but it didn't necessarily mean something bad, either. Meiren hurried to Ophelia, probably to whine about Lady Imogen. The woman gave him a polite nod when she felt his eyes on her, then drew her attention back to the young girl.

"Hey," he gave Ingrid a weak smile as she approached him. She didn't return the gesture.

"We're leaving," she said, a grave expression etched into her features. Her soft, doe-like eyes saddened.

What's up with her?

On a more important note, where were they leaving to?

"I suppose I'm going with you?"

Ingrid sighed and rubbed a hand down her face. "In most cases, I'd say the choice is yours, but the Council wants to speak with you. It's mandatory."

She pulled something small from her jacket's pocket. "Here; I don't know what kind of life you had in this world, but there's no telling what the Council wants," she shrugged, dropping a cell phone into his hands. He gave the device a confused look.

"Uh, thanks, but I have my own," and he waved his BlackBerry in his other hand as proof.

"You can't use that," Ingrid explained tiredly. "Not from now on. Your...parents, or whoever you need to call, they'll track you on it. We can't have a bunch of mortals following us. The other one's a burner."

Corban flipped the small, black device in between his fingers. "When will I come back?"

He'd ran away from home in the first place, but he had also carefully planned a way to Spain. Now, a plane ticket to Madrid burned in his jean pocket, about to be a waste of time. Was he really expected to leave this life behind without knowing anything about these inhuman women in a new world they claimed he was part of? He couldn't exactly explain his situation to his foster parents, Katy and Ryan. He couldn't even explain his situation to himself.

"I know this is confusing," Ingrid said, as though she'd read his mind. "I...I wouldn't expect to come back, Corban."

Though her eyes burned with sympathy, something else hid behind her hazel irises. It was a small glimpse of hope that he would go with them.

"Okay," he took a shaky breath and slipped the burner into his pocket. "Looks like you have another burden to carry."

She gave him a smile. "They'll explain everything to you," she told him, not elaborating on the 'they.'

He felt like something had been lifted from him. He was going to get answers. His 'green thumb' was more than a figment of his imagination. He would finally understand his dream.

And he wouldn't be alone. There would be people just like him.

~~~~~

"Are we ready?"

Ophelia had rounded up Meiren, who still fumed over whatever topic she'd argued with Imogen, and Corban leaned on his crutches while Ingrid rebandaged his ankle and forearms. They were just outside the terminal's smashed windows, the icy air much colder outside than inside the station. Still no sign of any Londoners wandered the streets. Only the occasional military helicopter whizzed overhead, likely assessing the damage.

Katy and Ryan are going to freak, Corban thought as he remembered his letter explained his stop at London. There wasn't a doubt in his mind the destroyed city was all over the news.

"Ouchhhh," he said for the umpteenth time and jumped. Ingrid now scowled at him, wrapping and unwrapping his ankle. The first few times he'd yelped in pain, she'd been sympathetic, but the winged girl now scolded him.

"If you stopped moving all over the place, this would hurt ten times less and we'd be done with it," she reprimanded. She looked up and down at his injured self. "Jesus, how on earth is there a bruise over your entire body?"

"Uh, I fell off a building??" he sarcastically rolled his eyes at the girl.

"Just, shut up," Ingrid snapped, but her lips twitched in the form of a smile at how insane his injuries were.

This is beginning to remind me of the twins, he thought tiredly. He hadn't known his fellow foster siblings for long, but he felt he should miss them more than he did. Maybe it was the pain that kept his mind off of the reality of leaving everything he knew behind.

"There, you can move now," Ingrid stood from her crouched position. She swiped at her dusty jeans and slung the med kit duffel bag over her shoulder. She pressed an unseen button on her bronze staff, and the thing shrunk into a metal cylinder, fitting comfortably into a leather strap around her hips.

Corban tested his weight on his bad ankle. Pain still shot up his leg if he put his foot all the way down, but his ankle wasn't going anywhere, thanks to the Sayidat girl's nursing skills.

"Try it without the crutches," she told him. "You won't be able to take them through the portal."

Corban reluctantly handed her the metal legs. He wavered on one foot. "Remind me again how this whole time-traveling works?"

She laughed at his pathetic hops. "Try limping," she suggested. "Like we all said two hundred times, its our Phenomena. It's what all Sayidats can do; make a highway through space and time and get to wherever we want to be."

"Yes, but how does it work?" he kept his eyes at the ground, careful not to step on broken shards of glass. "How can you control time?"

"How can you control plants?"

"Touché." He breathed heavily. Limping, it seemed was hard work, even harder when he had three broken ribs. The aspirin had been little help.

"So, a Phenomena is--"

"--An ability that makes you a Matu, a Phenomenal human, or a Hiwan, a Phenomenal animal," she finished for him.

"What about the between walker and the..." he racked his brain for the other creature that had attacked.

"Shadow? Shadows are Underworldian creatures, slaves to Chaos. They are only of the element Spirit, otherwise known as Rwh," she said the last word as 'Ruhr.'

"Right, right, right," he remembered. "And the between walkers are both? Spirit and Mortal, I mean?"

She nodded. "Yes, but so are Phenomenals. Each Matu and Hiwan contain one soul with two halves; Rwh and Mortal. The mortal soul is ourselves here on Topside. And our Rwh is like, oh, how do I put this...?"

She snapped her fingers. "It's a spiritual underneath that is a Downside version of ourselves. We only contain a little bit of Rwh, but I've never heard of someone channeling it into their Phenomena." Ingrid curiously peered at him.

"I don't know how I did it, either," he shrugged.

"Ophelia suspects--" and she abruptly stopped. "I shouldn't tell you this," he heard her mumble.

Corban didn't have time to question her. An eccentric Meiren skipped their way.

"C'mon! We're going hoooome," she said in a sing-song voice. Her axe was strapped to her small chest. He wondered if it was heavy, since the weapon was almost her height. Nevertheless, she danced under the falling snow.

"We'd better get going," Ingrid told him. She smiled softly.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah." He held the burner and his cell phone in his hands and inspected the two of them.

Ingrid frowned when she caught sight of his BlackBerry.

"Didn't I tell you to destroy that?" her eyebrows furrowed into a questioning gaze.

"Um, yeah," he said awkwardly, "I never got the chance to, I guess."

"Better hurry then," she said in an indifferent tone and walked briskly away to her mentor. Corban had an uneasy feeling he'd pissed her off somehow.

He weighed the phone in his hands. This was it. When he destroyed this, he'd have nothing left but the clothes on his back and in his book bag and a burner phone to remind him of the place he was leaving behind.

"Get over it," he told himself. It wasn't like this world had anything to offer him.

He was an unwanted foster kid, he wasn't a genius, he wasn't--

Crack!

The BlackBerry split into shards of plastic and glass as it hit the terminal's brick wall.

"Wait up!" Corban called to where Ophelia, Ingrid and Meiren waited under a storefront's damaged roof across the abandoned street. He limped to the Sayidats.

"Finally," Meiren rolled her eyes.

"Are we not waiting for the rest of them?" Corban asked Ophelia. He looked upward for the women that had wings that could take them anywhere, but there was only clouds. They had left shortly after Ophelia's private conversation with Ingrid, for reasons he didn't know why.

"They'll return later," she told him. "They have unfinished business in this world."

That's probably the most detailed explanation I'll get, he thought to himself.

"You might feel a little queasy after time-traveling for the first time," Ingrid whispered in his ear as Ophelia turned away.

"I've felt queasy since that shadow attacked," he mumbled back.

"Well, prepare yourself for feeling like your insides are about to be shredded like ground beef," Meiren deadpanned. Naturally, she'd eavesdropped on their conversation.

"Meiren, that really doesn't help," Ingrid adjusted her bandana and put her hands on her hips.

"I'm just being realistic," she shrugged.

Corban didn't see the big deal. So he'd feel a little sick? It didn't matter much to him, as he didn't think he could feel any worse. "I'm sure I'll be fine," he reassured Ingrid. She nodded but didn't look convinced.

He didn't know what he'd expected the portal to be like. He watched in awe as Ophelia drew an invisible circle with her hand, and a black hole as tall as Meiren faded into existence. Green and purple flickers of light flashed from inside, but it looked two-dimensional to him. It just floated in mid-air, but when he looked behind the circle, it just looked like he was staring at Ophelia with her arm raised.

"Cool, huh?" Meiren said.

"Yeah," he replied numbly. He kept his gaze on the portal. "Where are we going again?"

"An arc," Ophelia answered. Her deep, rich voice spoke in a low tone. "It's an island in the middle of the Pacific, off the coast of California, but technically doesn't exist in time and space. If it did, it would be an island in your world. But arcs are unseen to human eyes. It's kept people like us safe for thousands of years."

He'd heard Ingrid and Meiren mention arcs before. Corban assumed it was another unexplainable ability part of a Sayidat's Phenomena.

"I'll go first!" Meiren childishly jumped up and down. Ophelia smiled at her.

"Go on ahead, dear."

Corban hadn't known what to expect when someone went into one of their portals. As soon as the young girl touched the black orb, her body disappeared fast than he could blink. She was gone.

"I'll go behind you," Ophelia told Ingrid and Corban. She held her staff in one hand and a large, black coat in the other.

"Here."

Corban looked down and Ingrid held out an olive skinned hand. She gave him a soft look as he placed his clammy hand into her warm one. The rough calluses on her palms oddly soothed him.

"Don't let go," she warned him, and they moved in front of the swirling pit.

"Okay," he squeaked, reddening at the embarrassment of his cracking voice. Thanks, puberty.

"Ready?"

He nodded. Ingrid held a hand to the black hole. Her fingers brushed it, and they were cast into cold nothingness.

Corban lost all senses besides the warm hand he squeezed for dear life. He couldn't tell whether his eyes were closed or open, if he was floating or standing or falling, or if his skin brushed against layers of time.

Meiren's description of the portal was terribly perfect.

Minutes of this dark reality passed and his insides twisted themselves into painful knots. It ended when blinding white light reached his eyes and his senses returned.

"Home," a delicate voice whispered beside him.