#*screaming

"That way they'll chase you and I'll have just enough time to grab a few brains for Slurp. I mean, Isaac," Pugsley corrected himself quickly.

"You brought me along just to be a distraction?! I'm not drawing the cops away for you, Pugsley!" Eugene protested.

"Okay, well if you want, I can do the running, as long as you can grab the brains," Pugsley shrugged. "Either job is fun... do you know how to perform a complete craniotomy? Not where you just remove part of the brain, mind you, we're after the whole goodie."

"Pugsley!"

Down the street, sirens wailed and lights flashed. Both outcasts froze with Pugsley still fumbling at the lock.

"Damn, I'm not nearly as good at this as Wednesday!" Pugsley mourned.

"That's it, I'm out of here!" Eugene exclaimed.

He took off into the woods. Pugsley prepared to follow him, but his lockpick snagged in the door and refused to budge. While he was still struggling to pull it free, three cop cars raced past him without so much as slowing down. He watched in disbelief as they tore off down the street and disappeared from view.

"Huh. Guess they've got somewhere more important to be," Pugsley puzzled. "What... what... what a great stroke of luck! Eugene! Hey, Eugene!"

His friend was long gone. He heaved a sad sigh.

"Poor Eugene, he's gonna miss out on all the fun because he's so jumpy," Pugsley lamented on his friend's behalf.

He bent down again and went back to the task of opening the back door to the Jericho morgue.

Tara eyed the keys Gates carried. It wasn't hard to guess her intent.

"Walk away," Tara warned her. "Leave my brother alone."

"Aw, but your brother needs me," Gates pandered, expression simpering and manipulative. Tara was unimpressed with the display. "A hyde is doomed to waste away in agony in separation from his master. Don't you know that? Or didn't you bother to research your brother's condition?"

"I've read everything there is to read about hydes," Tara countered harshly. "You should know better than anyone that the available information is limited at best."

"That's true, I'm something of a... self-made expert on Tyler's particular breed of monster," Gates agreed. "Take my word for it, Ms. Galpin. He needs me."

"What he needs is to be free of you once and for all," Tara scowled. "What the hell are you doing here, anyway? Fairburn doesn't have something to do with this, does she?"

"Oh, Fairburn thought it would be conducive to Tyler's recovery to have me close by," Gates explained. "She thought the woman who unlocked her most fascinating patient once might be able to do it again."

"Well, that's a gaping breach of ethics and common sense," Tara noted.

More than an oversight on Fairburn's part, exposing Tyler to Gates intentionally likely constituted a moral breach that Tara could use to her advantage.

Assuming she could keep her brother safe from Gates, of course.

"Tara, careful," Tyler spoke up. "Don't underestimate her. I wouldn't be surprised if she was the one behind all the chaos out there."

"Listen to your big brother, honey," Gates drawled. "You're out of your depth. Just stand aside. I'll just take my hyde and be on my way..."

She took a step closer to the door of Tyler's cell. Tara raised her right hand in warning.

"Stay the hell away from my brother!" she growled. "He's not your property!"

"Oh please, don't bother baring your teeth if you're not prepared to use them," Gates scoffed. The next step she took put her not only in reach of the cell, but at arms length from Tara as well.

"Don't test me, Gates!" Tara hissed in warning.

"I'm taking Tyler," Gates smirked. "If you're going to stop me, it's now or never, Ms. Galpin. Well?"

Tara placed herself bodily between Gates and the door of the cell. Behind her, Tyler leaped to his feet. Foreboding curled menacingly in his gut, the knowledge of his master's nature filling him with dread and terror. The fear wasn't for his sake.

"Tara, you need to leave, now!" he told her, voice low and urgent. "You need to run while you still can, do you hear me?!"

"Like hell you're taking him!" Tara snarled, the entirety of her attention focused on Gates.

"Tara, listen to me!" Tyler snapped.

"I'm not leaving you here with her!" Tara yelled back. "I won't just abandon you! Back off, Gates! You can have my brother over my cold, dead body!"

"Well... if you insist," Gates shrugged. Her eyes flicked to the other Galpin in the room. "Tyler, honey? Be a good boy, won't you. Move the Da Vinci brat for Mommy."

Tara's expression twisted with disgust at the display.

"That's enough out of you, you fucking sicko!" she spat.

She raised her right hand, only for Tyler to catch her wrist through the bars. The hum of her power surged and then fizzled, the brief burst enough to send Gates stumbling back a few steps.

"Tyler, what-"

His grip tightened painfully, hard enough to wrench a harrowed, startled cry from Tara.

"You're hurting me!" she panted. "Tyler! Stop!"

"I said move the bitch!" Gates shouted. "Now, Tyler!"

The eyes that met Tara's were wide, black pits without a trace of iris left to them. Tara had enough time to feel fear when Tyler reached through the bars and swatted her. He sent her flying with little more than the palm of one hand and a short grunt of exertion.

Tara impacted the wall and bounced to the floor, groaned through her agony and rasped for breath. Her vision blurred and shook while she forced herself to look up, watched while Gates opened the door to Tyler's cell and freed him from his collar. She was speaking to him, saying something, crooning in that repugnant, condescending tone. Fury surged through Tara as she struggled back to her feet, clutched ribs that ached with every ragged inhalation she managed to rake in.

"Get- get away from him, Gates!" Tara cried.

"Tyler, honey..."

One more order, Tara realized, and she could be dead. Tyler would be forced on the run with this psycho, destined to end up dead himself or worse.

There was no way in hell Tara was going to stand by and watch that happen. Not while she still had a breath's worth of resistance left in her body.

"You took him from me once, Gates!" Tara shouted. "You can't have him again! I'm not letting you take my brother away from me again!"

Tara clenched her fist. Driven by turbulent emotion, the outburst of her telekinesis wrapped Gates in a psychic tempest unlike anything Tara had ever previously known herself to be capable of. She yanked on pure instinct, pulled Gates abruptly from the cell while Tyler reached for her. Excruciation painted his expression in shades of mindless, forlorn tragedy. As hard as Tara had hit the wall, she lashed Gates twice as brutally, let her slide down in a gasping, helpless heap.

Tara saw Tyler move out of the corner of her eye. She stopped him with a wave of her hand, sent him stumbling back with barely any effort at all. She lifted his collar with the twitch of a single finger, snapped it back into place and twisted the mechanism with ease. He grabbed it with both hands, tore and growled with futile, animal ferocity while Gates rose incrementally, only to collapse again.

With Tyler in check, Tara rounded on his master again, rage burning behind her eyes. Reason was a god she would never forsake, and he was a deity who condoned violence when the cause was rational.

"He'll never be free while you're breathing, you fucking psychopath!" Tara spat.

She clenched the fingers of her right hand again, yanked Gates back to her feet, dragged her up with her back to the wall. Blood already spotted the corner of her mouth. Internal injuries? Or something as minor as a split lip or a bit tongue?

It didn't matter to Tara. She curled her fingers even tighter, nails digging into her palm hard enough to draw blood as Gates choked to death in front of her. The villain's eyes widened, pupils consumed by her panic as she stared down mortality. Tara glared at her like the very incarnation of wrath, like the vengeance of an entire bloodline distilled into one stubborn Da Vinci.

Savage satisfaction filled Tara when she watched the light drain from Gates' eyes. Behind her, Tyler snarled and howled, thrashed and wailed. When Gates went still, Tara let her body fall to the floor. Tyler collapsed in sync with his master, chest heaving, hair wild, disconsolate tears streaming down his cheeks.

"What did you do?!" he demanded. "What did you- what did you do?! What the fuck did you do?!"

"Stop that!" Tara snapped.

Tyler stilled at once. Tara didn't read any deeper into his compliance. She was too dazed from the culmination of her spite, her surrender to the darkest impulses predisposed to her by her twisted lineage. The way he obeyed her completely, without hesitation, without flaw, should have raised her hackles. She was too busy basking in her spite, in the vicious thrill of victory.

She loomed over Laurel Gates corpse. Her lips curled up in a snarl of contempt. She spat vehemently at the husk of the murderer who had ruined her brother's life. Or tried to, at the very least.

"There's no sin in excising a tumor," Tara declared coldly. "Do you understand me, Tyler? I didn't do anything wrong. This was self defense at worst. More realistically? The world is a better place without someone like Laurel Gates to sully it. Say you understand."

"I... I understand, Tara," he mumbled.

One Galpin on his knees. A dead master, already pallid in the otherworldly glow of the emergency lights. The wail of sirens outside and the escalating chaos of an asylum tearing itself apart from the inside out.

Tara settled down cross-legged in front of the door to her brother's cell.

"Everything's going to be alright, Tyler," she assured him. "Don't worry about anything.

Behind her, her big brother stopped trembling. His breathing steadied one shaky inhalation at a time.

"Okay," Tyler said, numb with the inability to disagree with her. "Okay, I... I believe you, Tara."

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