“What?” Parker screamed.

Before either of them knew it, Alexis was standing right by their sides. “What’s wrong?” she asked, winded from sprinting to them. “I heard Parker yell, tell me what happened!”

Parker dropped to the ground and sat with his head buried in his knees. He heard Alexis ask her question but couldn’t form the words. How could Lara have his parents? They couldn’t possibly be working for her, they would never do something like that. He ran every scenario through his head, and even though he was happy to hear that his parents had made it to Earth 2, he struggled to not just be worried that his parents’ lives were at risk every second they were with Lara. The more he thought about it the harder he started breathing.

Alexis crouched down and wrapped her arms around him and held on tightly. “Parker, talk to me… please…”

It was several more moments before Parker said anything to her. “She has them…” was all he could muster.

Alexis looked at him confused. She turned to look at Master Sora but could barely make out his face in the darkness. A flame appeared in her hands and grew to the size of a softball. “Tell me what’s going on Master Sora! Why is Parker so freaked out? Who does she have? Is she, Lara?” Her breathing became more rapid the more questions she threw at Master Sora

“It seems that Lara may have Parker’s parents.” Alexis gasped loudly. “We can assume that she has them captive and is forcing them to help her. Probably by threatening to hurt Parker and his sister. We have to assume that Lara can sense where we all are, even though we haven’t been able to do so since the jump.”

“Parker…” Alexis breathed out, squeezing him tighter and kissing him on the cheek. “What can I do? How can I help?”

He didn’t respond to her, but he knew that she’d figure out quickly that he just needed her to be there with him. There was a new plan forming in his head. Get the man to talk more, by any means and go rescue his parents.

“We’ve got to go and save them. I know they’re not willingly helping her. There’s no way.”

Master Sora put a hand on one of each of their shoulders. “Don’t do anything rash.” He looked Parker dead in the and repeated himself. “Don’t do anything rash. We need to think this out. Besides, we don’t even know where she currently is.”

“Then let’s get that information out of this guy that attacked us!” Parker stood up. Alexis went from grasping him around the shoulders to squeezing his hand. “He’s got to know where she is, right?”

Master Sora took a deep breath. “It’s possible. But I don’t want you to get your hopes up in case he truly doesn’t know.”

Parker started to walk away and then stopped, realizing that he had no idea where they were keeping this man. “Where is he?”

They all walked to the building where Master Sora was keeping the men. When they got there, the man Parker wanted to talk to was tied to a chair with his hands buried into the ground. Parker assumed it was to keep him from using his Imperial. The other three were all strapped to cots off in a corner. From the looks of it, they seemed to still be unconscious.

As Parker walked closer to the man with his hands buried, he could feel the temperature rise. It was as though he was generating heat like a furnace from inside his body, even though his hands were contained. Parker hadn’t really thought about being able to use his Fire Imperial without the use of his hands. He crouched down in front of the man and looked into his eyes.

As he stared, he realized that he didn’t have a plan. What was he even supposed to ask at this point? “Who are you?” It felt like a safe place to start.

The man stared back into Parker’s eyes but didn’t respond. There were several moments of silence before anything happened. Parker felt an intense heat start radiating from below him. He must’ve been using his Fire Imperial to try and break his hands free.

“What keeping his hands down?” Parker turned and asked the master.

“They’re locked in metal boxes that are buried below the ground.”

Parker seemed confused by that. “Couldn’t he just pull them up out of the ground?”

The master chuckled at the thought. “Only if he can lift over two hundred pounds on each hand. They’re big metal boxes.”

“Will they melt if he uses his Imperial enough?”

Master Sora shook his head back and forth. “I’ve never encountered a fire hot enough to melt the boxes so it’s very doubtful.”

“Do we know what his name is?” Parker asked optimistically. Master Sora shook his head. He turned back to the man and stared at him once more. The man looked right back into his eyes and started to lick his lips in small bursts, like a lizard.

“Who are you?” Parker asked again. The man just grinned at him and kept his mouth shut. “Is there anything you can tell me?” Parker wasn’t sure if he should mention his parents or Lara. Should he let on that he knows anything?

“I can tell you nothing of use,” the man muttered.

Parker almost wanted to laugh. “Nothing of use? How could you possibly know what is of use to me?”

“You’re but a mere child. Therefore, nothing I have to say right now should matter to you in the slightest.”

Parker took a step back. He knows that he’s young but he’s already done more with his Imperials at age seventeen than most adults can muster in their whole lives. “Could a mere child do this?” he spat at the man. In an instant, he vanished from place.

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He could see everyone standing around him looking for him. Parker’s heart raced a mile a minute. He’d done it. Finally able to use his Space Imperial. On top of that, he was able to see everyone around him. After a moment, he reappeared in front of everyone else and collapsed to the ground.

------

“What happened…” Parker groaned, slowly sitting up and rubbing his forehead as the morning sun gleamed in through the window. Alexis wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as tight as she could.

“Are you okay?” she asked, breathing heavily.

“Yeah…” Parker said slowly. “I think so. What happened to me?”

Alexis let go of him and sat back on the edge of his bed so they could properly talk. “You looked at the man, said something and then disappeared. Did you use your Space Imperial?”

Then it all came back to Parker. How he’d yelled at the man for calling him a mere child and then he felt his Space Imperial work, but not just that, he’d made it work like Lara had back on Earth 1. “Yeah, I did. I did it like Lara had. I was able to see everyone around me. Then the next thing I knew, I woke up here…”

“That makes sense then,” Alexis stated. “As soon as you reappeared, you blacked out. Master Sora flew you back to here so that you could rest.”

Parker shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense though! You’ve never blacked out before.”

Alexis scooted over from where she was sitting so that Parker could swing his legs over the edge of the bed. “It does make sense though Parker. Think about it! You’ve never used your Space Imperial here. It’s always been too tough for some reason. So, the fact that you finally pulled it off and then blacked out does make sense. And on top of that, you just said you’d been able to see all of us. That had to have taken even more energy than our regular Space Imperial would!”

She was getting more and more excited the more she spoke. A large grin broke out on Parker’s face as he watched her go on and on and his heart started to race. It still baffled him how after all this time his heart could still race like this when he was around Alexis.

“What?” Alexis asked. “What’s that stupid grin for?”

Parker jumped a little in his spot. “Nothing…” he stammered, knowing he’d been caught.

“Don’t lie. It’s for something. Was it something I did?”

“You’re just cute. That’s all.” Her cheeks burned a bright red at his words.

“So, you think I’m cute?” she asked, batting her eyes at him.

Parker laughed lightly. “Maybe a little…”

It was quiet for a moment and then there was a loud explosion that came from outside. Parker went to jump to his feet but when he stood up, the blood rushed from his head, and he dropped back onto his bed. Alexis grabbed him by his shoulder and looked at him as if there was something she could do for him.

“Go. Go see what that was.” Parker motioned for her to get moving. She was hesitant to leave him but after enough motioning from Parker she finally got up and left the room.

The room felt eerily quiet after she left. Parker did everything he could to focus his hearing in to see if there was any other commotion going on. It was a long time before he heard anything. Master Sora came striding into his room with a grim expression on his face.

“What happened?” Parker blurted out, unable to control himself.

The master dropped his head before speaking. He sighed. “The man we captured escaped…” Parker could tell that Master Sora wasn’t wanting to break the news to him.

“What?” Parker screamed. “How could you let that happen?”

A gust of wind filled the room that made Parker stop in his tracks. “I did not.” Master Sora said finitely. “I wasn’t around when it happened and from the sounds of it no one knows how he managed to escape. But all of them are gone now.”

“We need to leave then.”

The master nodded his head. “Yes. I agree with that. So start getting your things together so we can get out of here as fast as possible. I’ll fill you in on everything when we get moving, but it’s going to be me, you, Alexis, and Caleb. Everyone else is going another direction.”

“What about Ana?” Parker asked.

“I’ve asked her to stay with the other group.”

“Why?”

Master Sora looked as though he were getting frustrated. “We’ll discuss the rest of it when we’re moving.”

The master left and Parker packed up the few things he still had and wanted to take with him. He made sure to find Alexis as soon as he could and fill her in on the little bit that the master had told him. By the time Parker made it to Caleb, he was already packed and ready to go.

The four of them met by the clocktower at the edge of where they were camping out. Master Sora quickly ushered them out of their camp so they could get moving. Parker was dying to get more information from the master but knew that they would need to be further away from the camp before he would start telling any more details. He couldn’t figure out why, but it felt like the master was trying to keep it a secret that they were going off on their own.

The sun was high in the sky now and Parker felt like they were finally far enough away to start asking questions. Up until then, the trip had been eerily quiet with no one talking and just the sounds of nature around them.

“Okay, start talking,” Parker stated.

The master glared at him for a moment. “Listen, the three of you.” Master Sora stopped walking and looked at the three of them as they stopped and turned around to see him. “What I’m going to tell you is going to really upset you so please try to keep it together.”

All three of them stared at him, waiting for what was to come. Parker felt like he had an idea of what the master would say but prayed to himself that it wasn’t right. He could feel the same energy coming from Alexis right next to him.

“Lara was in our camp today.”

Silence fell. The four of them stood still, not uttering a word. Parker opened his mouth to talk but closed it, not sure what to actually say. His blood was boiling. It felt like his entire body was about to burst.

The next moment the air around him turned a shade of gray and he saw everyone looking around all of a sudden. It took a moment and then Parker realized that he’d used his Space Imperial again. He could see the others, making his blood pump even harder. How had he managed it again? Was he going to black out afterwards like the last time? Before he had any more time to think about it color fill the air around him once more.

“Parker!” Was the last thing Parker heard as he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.