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The trip back to Temptations flew by in an instant for Marcus Lewis. Even without any headphones in his ears, none of the noises around the jackalope registered. From the walk to the bus stop to when he slipped through the back hallway and into Melody's dressing room, the only sound Marcus heard was a low hum with a faint pulse of what was turning into a pounding headache.

He sat on the foldout bed for a few moments, letting his eyes sweep over the scene around him. A day and a half ago he was waking up in a bed big enough to get lost in and getting ready to go to school. A week ago he was in his dormitory talking about video games with his roommate. He had two beds of his own, closets full of expensive clothing, meals made just for him, and the biggest worry in his day was if someone would say something mean.

Marcus looked all around him. The chipped paint on the walls, food containers and paper towels left on the big table. He thought about the last few days.

"...that jacket doesn't seem like such a big deal," he thought to himself.

The disastrous visit to Heaven Hearts Hybrids kept playing in Marcus's mind, a nonstop loop. It didn't make any sense. Why had Adrian Lucas lied about his mother? Why did that rabbit seem so off-put that he was there?

What was going on upstairs?

Marcus rubbed his face and opened up his laptop, plugging it into a nearby socket and tapping along on the keyboard. He stared at the screen for a few minutes, trying to decide what his next step would be. Something was off about that place, and he wanted to find out what. The chimera was friendly, for sure. Too friendly, really. The teen knew there had to be something shady happening.

Unfortunately, his internet skills proved not quite up to the task of uncovering whatever underhanded schemes were going on there. All he was able to dig up was a handful of social media pages and fluff piece news articles that talked about how great Adrian Lucas was. The same he'd seen a dozen times before.

Marcus tried to find a way to force the time to pass. He watched videos, tried to nap. There was nothing later in the day he was eager to get to, but he didn't have anything directly in front of him, either. He was, in a way, waiting for some answer to come. Some idea of where to go next. He didn't like being tucked away in the back of Temptations. He felt caged. The walls were stifling.

The jackalope needed to get outside for a little while and walk, to clear his head. The static was starting to creep back in.

Now that he was a little more familiar with the layout, Marcus began to find downtown Boston actually rather calming. He had nowhere in particular to be, so he let his feet carry him wherever they felt like going. He did, however, make sure that he kept them aimed more towards the middle of the city rather than going off the beaten path. He want to at least stay where the sidewalks were wider and the storefronts were more upscale.

He found another cafe with the right diet that was near the harbor and decided to set himself down there for a while. A cup of coffee and a small snack bag gave him about all he had the stomach for, and so he sat on a bench, overlooking the water.

Marcus took slow breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth, just like Barbara had taught him when he was stressed.

"Smell the roses..." he thought as he inhaled.

"...blow out the candles."

In truth, the jackalope wasn't feeling as stressed as he thought he should be. It seemed wrong. Given his situation, Marcus thought he'd be a bundle of nerves, but he wasn't. He felt the opposite. His insides felt hollow, like everything had been scooped out and all that was left was a shell of him that was gliding along, detached from everything. With no idea of where he was going, how he would get home, or what "home" even meant now, all Marcus was doing was following the wind. He hoped it would take him somewhere calm, like the waters in front of him.

Maybe that was the answer, he thought. Truly start all over. Hop on a plane, cross the ocean, get a new name and try again. Take a do-over. Pretend like none of this ever happened. A clean slate.

"Hey!"

Marcus jolted in surprise as his fantasy got so rudely interrupted.

"Whoa, fuck, what??" he blurted back, turning his head towards the voice.

It snapped back at him. "Don't look at me! Eyes ahead. We're not talking."

Marcus looked around, confused, trying to figure out what was going on. There was a bird on the bench next to his, a barn owl about thirty years old or so from the looks of things, but with a few odd features. His beak was straight, pointing forwards rather than hooking down, and he had a red crest atop his head, a head which seemed to be in constant motion. He was dressed in a dark brown zip-up hoodie with a backpack on, heavily worn jeans and big sneakers to round out the outfit. Everything seemed ill-fitting, oversized. The owl's wide, nearly all-black eyes made it impossible to know exactly where he was looking.

"Uh... okay, if we're not talking, then... what do you want?" Marcus asked, uneasily.

The owl clacked his beak a few times. "You need help. I can give help."

Marcus swallowed once, readjusting his position on the bench, his feet subconsciously sliding into a position to spring up and run if need be. "What makes you think I need help?"

That got a laugh from the owl. It was a fast, staccato laugh that matched his speech, with no build up nor wind down. Just a sudden, rapid burst that immediately stopped. "Are you saying you don't? I can tell when we need help. Am I wrong?"

The jackalope was having a hard time following his new friend, and shook his head a few times. "Okay, hold on. Just... back up a bit, okay? Who are you?"

Despite his earlier warnings, the owl turned his head, matching gaze with Marcus. It was an eerie stare. Those black eyes seemed to see all of him at once. Inside and out.

"I am you. Isn't that obvious enough?"

Of all the answers Marcus thought he might have gotten, that was nowhere close to landing on the list, and left him at a complete loss. He was beginning to think this guy wasn't quite all there upstairs.

"You're... me," he replied, voice flat.

The owl's head immediately turned to the opposite side for a moment, making Marcus flinch. It was just unnatural looking. Then they met eyes once again.

"Yes. I am you. You are me. We are us. Hybrids, mm-hm," he said, his head changing directions once more to face front. "Share an energy, an essence. Between all of us. That's why they want us gone. Hard to control."

Marcus took in a slow breath. Now he was a bit more certain that the bird was a little off. He nodded once, carefully. "O... kay, so you're a hybrid, too. What um... what species?"

There was a pause then. Marcus noticed the avian's hands were just as fidgety as the rest of him, tapping his fingers on his thigh or cracking his knuckles constantly. "Tyto alba. Dryocopus pileatus. Barn owl and woodpecker. Not quite as glamorous as a jackalope, of course. No folklore. Easier to blend in."

The teenage hybrid's feet pressed down into the ground briefly, but then relented. He didn't quite want to run off, not just yet. There was something about this odd bird that had his interest.

"You keep saying they... who are they?" he asked.

The owl pulled in a sharp breath, then huffed it out. "Government. Big corporations. The military. Police. Churches. Everyone who needs the status quo to remain unchallenged. Everyone in their neat little boxes. They used to burn us. Called us heathens. Now it's called euthanasia. Mercy killing, they say. Tell the parents the child wasn't viable. You and me? We're the lucky ones. Managed to get past them."

Marcus squinted at the rambling owl a few moments. Every little noise seemed to make him jump and spin his head to see it. The jackalope might have been ready to run off, but this one looked like he might shoot straight up into the sky at any moment. Amused as he might have been, Marcus was a little concerned for him.

"You all right, buddy?" he asked. "You seem a little paranoid."

"Not paranoid!" the owl bit back. The volume of his own voice seemed to alarm him, though, and he quickly quieted back down, which did nothing to bolster his argument. "Not paranoid. Awake. Aware. I'm the only one they can't get to. See that's your problem. You sleep at night. Don't you?"

For a moment, Marcus wondered if he was being pranked. This guy didn't even seem real. "Er... yes?" he replied.

The owl nodded, pointing a feathered finger. "Exactly. You sleep, and that's why you don't see."

"You... don't sleep?" Marcus asked.

The owl shook his head rapidly, pulling his bag from his back and sitting it on his lap, holding his arms around it. "No. Never sleep. Nocturnal, diurnal. That's why I see them for what they are. When you sleep, your brain is vulnerable. Susceptible. You call them dreams. You know what it is? Indoctrination. Beamed right into your head, and you think it's your own thoughts. Those aren't cell phone towers. Mind control. Low frequency broadcasts. But I never let my guard down. They never have a chance. I've got it all right here, look."

Marcus whistled through his teeth in amazement. The picture had become a little more clear. This was a bona fide madman. Though, in a way, that wasn't his fault. Marcus was beginning to realize that, in a very real way, he was a luckier hybrid than most. As much as it made him stand out, he wasn't clashing internally. His two species weren't in direct conflict with one another. Unlike this one.

The half-owl unzipped his bag, reaching in and pulling out a handful of papers. It wasn't a nice folder, or even a notebook. Just loose sheets clutched in his feathered hand.

"You see this?" he said, holding the stack towards Marcus. "All of it. In here. While you've been wasting your time in your bed catching forty winks and having your brain scoured and reprogrammed, I did research. I found the paper trail."

Marcus hesitantly took the papers offered to him and looked through them. Each one was covered in nearly illegible writing from edge to edge. Diagrams, sketches, notes, some layered on top of one another or scratched out and "corrected." There didn't seem to be any organization to any of it, no thread between them. A drawing of a cell tower next to random names, some kind of flowchart with initials. Arrows guiding from one incoherent statement to another on the opposite side of the page.

The teenage hybrid tried to make sense of what he was looking at, but it was like reading a foreign language. He had a hard time believing the bird could even interpret any of it.

A second later the papers were snatched back, the owl cramming them into his bag more carelessly than Marcus would have expected. "See? I found them out. Everything is part of it. That's why I have to be careful. And so do you. You're not safe here."

Marcus knew the owl was a lunatic. He knew there was no reason to take anything the guy said seriously. Still, in the deeper recesses of his mind, Marcus Lewis was wondering if there might be some nugget of reality buried beneath the thick layers of paranoia.

"What do, uh, they want from me?" the teen asked.

"Elimination," the owl said, shaking his head quickly. "We represent a disruption to the system. They consider themselves superior because of pure genetics, when the opposite is true. They're weak due to lack of variance. Weak genes are perpetuated rather than bred out. They are the past. We are the future."

Marcus blew a breath out, his gaze going to the ocean in front of him. The conversation kept creeping close to the real world before taking sudden sharp turns into outer space. The jackalope glanced around to make sure no one was watching them. It wasn't that he was worried they would get caught, but he really didn't want anyone, even a total stranger, to think he was associated with any of this.

Even so, Marcus had some sympathy for the jittery bird. Obviously he believed what he was saying. He was genuine about his warnings, his fear. He almost felt bad arguing, like it would mean he was breaking down the poor guy's world.

"I don't know how to break it to you, man, but... hybrids? Like us? We can't really, you know. Breed."

The owl huffed again, clacking his beak, his head rapidly moving back and forth a few times. He looked offended that Marcus had caught a rather gaping hole in his theory. "Irrelevant. Sexual reproduction is a vestige of our feral ancestors. Other ways to breed if they'd put their effort into it, but that's why they won't. We've been to outer space, asexual reproduction is simple by comparison. We need to be contained. Tracked."

The jackalope coughed quietly to himself. He'd had enough fun with the tinfoil hat conspiracies for one day. There was enough for him to worry about in reality without getting his head all bogged down in governmental genocide and whatever else this crackpot was trying to tell him. If he stayed there for too long, he had a feeling he might catch insanity by proxy.

"Okay well... thank you very much, that was... enlightening," Marcus said, rolling his eyes a bit. "But I gotta get moving. It's been a long day and I got shit to do."

He stood up, smiling as politely as he could, and turned to walk away.

"Wait! Please, you have to listen to me!" the owl sputtered, quickly jumping up from his bench. Unfortunately, this meant that the backpack on his lap went straight to the ground, sending papers pouring out of it in all directions.

Marcus turned back, putting his hands up defensively and doing his best to keep some distance between himself and the conspiratorial bird. "Hey, dude, listen. Thanks for the lesson, b..."

The jackalope sighed, looking at the owl down on hands and knees, trying to scoop the contents of his bag up. It wasn't just papers, either. The bag had been packed nearly full and Marcus got a good look at what appeared to be all of the paranoid avian's possessions. Papers, books, photographs, pill bottles. Marcus wondered if the bird was homeless or just made it a point to carry everything with him. Neither seemed out of the question.

A memory flashed back to him, then. Of a teenage hybrid at a fancy school, pushed down by a bully, frantically trying to gather things up into his own bookbag. Marcus frowned, squatting down to help the owl, making sure nothing got carried away by the wind.

"Jeez, you sure have a lot of, uh, stuff," Marcus said, trying to sound as friendly as he could about it.

The owl's head turned in all directions as he made an effort to organize the various objects, looking over both shoulders, all the way behind him, as though he were expecting someone to run up and try to steal them. "Research. Life's work," he said. "Not safe to leave them at home. Never know who might break in."

Okay, Marcus thought. He wasn't homeless. That was good, at least. He got a nice little stack of papers, along with a notebook, and then plucked a small pile of photographs that were attempting to scuttle away down the concrete.

There was something oddly fascinating about it all. His ramblings sounded incoherent, but the sheer volume of work he'd put into all of this... it felt like there had to be something there. Even if not, just seeing how intricate and apparently heavily researched it was almost had Marcus wanting to talk to him further, pick his brain, read through all of the notebooks. He'd seen videos online about exploring crazy mysteries, heck he could do a whole series just on this.

One picture caught his attention, though. A photograph of a house. A house that Marcus knew rather well. One he'd been to before. Just a few hours ago, in fact. And there were more photos of it. Different times of day. Different angles. Mostly from a distance, some close up, some trying to get a look into the windows.

"...what's this?" Marcus asked, holding the pictures out to the owl.

The bird's head craned forward, those jet black eyes staring at the images, acting like it was a new item that needed examined for the first time.

"Heaven Hearts Hybrids. Founded 1997. Owner, Adrian Lucas," he finally said, the answer coming out sounding like the voice assistant on a cell phone.

Marcus nodded, impatient. "Right, yeah, but why are you taking pictures of an adoption agency?"

The bird looked at him a moment, his head tilting to one side a few degrees. "Agency? No, no no no. A factory. Hybrid testing, experiments. Adoptions? That's all a front. Smokescreen. Public image to keep anyone off of their trail. Look, look here. See up here?" he said, taking one picture and tapping his finger on it.

Marcus looked at the picture where the hybrid owl was pointing. It was the second floor of Heaven Hearts Hybrids. The picture was late at night. The lights appeared to be on, but with curtains covering the windows. He couldn't see what was going on inside.

The owl continued. "That's where they do it. Ship babies in from all over the world, process them right here."

In the ocean of everything else the bird had been babbling about, Marcus knew this was no different. Still, the story was compelling in a perverse way. The owl's mind was weaving the kind of story that would get movie critics jeering it for being outlandish, and yet Marcus was curious. He helped Jacob with the remainder of this belongings and then stood up again.

"Process? What do you mean?" he asked.

The bird spent a moment sorting his things out, zipping his bag closed again and holding it against his chest. "Medical. Scientific. Research is difficult, so many species about. Finding out how their genetics can interact, blend. How their bodies react to... testing. What they can survive. Like I said. Hybrids are stronger than the purebreds. They want to unlock our secrets."

Marcus's paused, carefully piecing out his sentence so he could get some clarification without making the bird feel like he was getting interrogated. "I thought you said they wanted to kill us."

The owl clacked his beak a few times, his head shooting forwards enough to make Marcus nearly jump away. Then he shook his head again, as if to clear it. "Adults, yes. We serve no purpose outside of the laboratory. Want us a secret. Hidden away. Only useful as infants. Young bodies. Young minds. Untainted."

Marcus nodded, doing his best to put on the act of understanding what he was being told. They were starting to go off into Crazy Town again, and somehow he still wanted to know more. Or at least, hear more of what the mayor of town was saying.

"Okay, but... then why are they adopting the hybrids out?"

The owl looked at him a moment. Marcus couldn't tell what was going on in his head, the eyes stayed expressionless. Black as night. "The pretty ones get sold. Rich families pay handsomely. Gives them enough to put on the books. Keeps them looking legitimate."

"The pretty ones," Marcus repeated, slowly. He knew what it meant, but had to make sure.

"Yes," the owl nodded, not picking up on how this portion of the story might be affecting his new confidant. "You know. Unicorns, gryphons..."

"...jackalopes."

The owl paused then, his eyes blinking, taking in Marcus's image. He nodded, looking downwards a moment. "Apologies. You're one of the lucky ones," he said, his voice low. Sympathetic. "Stronger than the rest. Most don't survive more than a few months. The ones they can't sell, kept until they die too. No graves. Bodies burnt, ashes disposed of. Like they never existed at all."

Marcus swallowed. His rational mind knew it was bullshit. Obviously it was. He was listening to an insomniac who was running around with a backpack full of his ravings. Even so, the conviction in him made it hard to shake it off as totally fabricated.

"And Adrian Lucas..." the teen hybrid said, gently goading the owl to continue.

The bird shook his head in that jolting way. "Adrian Lucas? No such thing. Invented. Not real."

That one caught Marcus by surprise. "Er, what do you mean?"

"Chimera? Three-way hybrid? Impossible," the owl said, huffing his breath out like this was too obvious to need asking. "Better luck sewing three animals together. No record of Adrian Lucas before Heaven Hearts Hybrids. Made up."

Marcus's brain was turning in knots trying to sift his way through that little revelation. "Okay, you're gonna need to explain that. What do you mean, made up?"

The owl nodded. "Yes yes. Studio creation. Computer effects. Deep fake videos, the works. It's all a mirage. Put a friendly face on it and no one thinks they'd ever do such things. Depressing how effective it is. Everyone sees old Uncle Adrian, ignores the horrors they commit."

The jackalope sighed. For a moment, he thought there was something underneath the delusion, and now he was feeling pretty stupid for it. He shook his head, forcing all of that out and reminding himself that, of course, he was just listening to a sleep-deprived mind's fantasy.

That said, it was obvious that the owl had been doing his homework. He might not have been drawing the right conclusions, but Marcus couldn't deny that he'd been busy with all that time he wasn't spending on sleep. He wasn't sure it was the best idea, but Marcus decided to try and get a little information out of the other hybrid.

"Okay, well... do you know where I could find him?"

The owl's eyes stared, blankly as ever, in return. "Find who?"

Marcus coughed. "The chimera?"

A beat of silence passed between them. "I just told you. Not real," the avian said, sounding confused.

Marcus nodded. "Right, yeah. I got that part. But um, let's say I wanted to find the... real Adrian Lucas, the one in charge," he said, trying to find a way to phrase it that was speaking the owl's language.

"Ah! The controller. Dangerous. Heavily guarded. Hard to get to," came the reply.

That was progress. Marcus was a little proud of himself, he was starting to learn how to talk to crazy. Though, on second thought, that might be something he should be more concerned about. "Right. Yes. The controller. Do you know where he lives?"

The owl's beak clicked, and his head did its routine of checking the surroundings. He pulled his bag against his chest more tightly. "Of course."

Another moment of dead air sat while Marcus waited for him to finish.

"...do you wanna tell me?"

The owl looked down at his bag, then back at Marcus. "Why?"

Marcus pondered his answer. It had to be something that would appeal to that brand of delusion. "I wanna take him out. Come on, you and me, we can make a difference. You've been doing all this research, right? Well, now it's time to put it to use."

The owl considered him a moment. He looked Marcus up and down. "...no. No. Suicide mission. Can't have that on my conscience."

Marcus grunted lightly. Time to press in a bit further. "Listen, you want everyone thinking you're just some crazy conspiracy nut? Trust me. I know what I'm doing. I just need to know where I'm going. I can prove you're telling the truth."

The owl's head stopped moving. He stood perfectly still, staring at Marcus. After all of the rapid movement, the sudden stillness left the jackalope on edge. Then, finally, the bird put the straps of his backpack on so it hung from his front and unzipped, digging around. It took him a while to find exactly what he was looking for, but eventually he pulled out a sheet of paper that he passed over to Marcus.

Marcus looked down at the sheet. It wasn't an address. It was a printed out map that the owl had drawn on, one that looked like it wasn't in the city itself, but somewhere more remote. It was black and white, showing what seemed to be a lake, some rivers, and a few winding roads. Nothing like Boston itself. He had no idea where this was. There was a line drawn from one of the roads in marker that led up to a big scribbled dot, numbers littered about the page showing distances and bearings. By the big dot, the name "ADRIAN" was written in block letters with quotes around it.

"All right. Well uh... thanks... what's your name?"

The bird paused, unsure, but then replied. "Jacob."

Marcus nodded. "Thanks, Jacob. I'm Marcus."

Jacob's head began to pick up its previous rhythms. "Well. Best of luck, Marcus. A lot of lives are counting on you," he said. "And if you get caught, I've never met you before."

The jackalope chuckled. "Of course. Sure."

Then, Marcus Lewis turned and went on his way, blowing out a breath that seemed to be holding every single bit of tension that had been lingering in his chest since their conversation started. He looked at the paper again, frowning some. The image looked more like a forest than a neighborhood. Assuming Jacob wasn't just making things up, hopefully the place wasn't too far away. Marcus had a feeling if he was going to go and confront the chimera at his house, he'd only get one shot. If he wanted to get any answers, he needed to be absolutely sure of what he was doing.

For now, though, he needed to go back to Temptations and lie down. Suddenly, he was absolutely exhausted.

Back at the club, Marcus sprawled out on the folded-out couch. Truth be told, the mattress wasn't all that bad. It wasn't the luxury sleep system he had back home, but it was fine enough. Unfortunately, even in his dreams, he found little rest. Marcus's subconsciousness floated back to that house. He saw the chimera's false smile, standing still in that front lobby. Unmoving. He imagined seeing Adrian Lucas flicker and distort, an error in his programming. Underneath, just an animatronic skeleton.

He imagined the walls of Heaven Hearts Hybrids falling away from all around him, revealing rows and rows of tiny hospital beds, each one containing a small child, all different species mixed together. The rabbit, Whitney, walking along and checking on them. Injecting one, taking another's temperature. Then, the cries all stopped, replaced by the drone of a flatlined heart monitor.

"Ah fuck," the chimera's voice boomed. "Well, throw 'em in the furnace. Make room for the next batch."

Marcus's eyes snapped open, looking up at the ceiling, feeling more shaken than he cared to admit.

"...that fucking bird."

Sighing, Marcus paced around the dressing room at the back of Temptations. Melody had the night off, and aside from a few polite texts checking up on him, they hadn't spoken that day, and he didn't want to pester. It was enough that she'd given him money (an allowance, almost), he wasn't about to start poking at her like a bored little brother. Even if that was how he felt at the moment.

"Okay... okay, Marcus, let's take a look at that map."

So he did. He pulled out his laptop and opened up a map website to take a look at where Jacob was telling him to go. Or at least, he tried to. The owl's map was... tricky to read, to say the least.

"The hell is any of this... it looks like a note card for a physics test," he grunted, squinting and trying to interpret.

Marcus's only hope was to try and ignore the bird's scratchings and focus on what he could see on the map itself, but even that wasn't the most helpful. With so few landmarks visible, he couldn't easily see where on a wider map it was located. Eventually he found a street name that matched, and started dragging it along, hoping he was going in the right direction. His eyes bounced from the paper in his hand to the screen, pinching to zoom and looking for anything that seemed to match.

He found it. A crossroad, unlabeled both on the map he'd been given and the one online, but the shapes matched perfectly. The edge of a large lake. The sheet may have been grayscale, but his laptop was showing full color, and the green all over meant he was in a forest. A quick double check showed that it was almost fifteen miles north of the club. That made sense, he hadn't seen anything resembling a forest on the bus ride over.

Marcus continued following along. He got the right spot. He followed the extra markings Jacob had put on it and got up to where he'd indicated. The map itself showed nothing there. It was nearly a mile from the nearest road, closer to a river than any streets. Marcus frowned, but decided to see what the satellite imagery showed, and tapped the corner icon.

"Mother fucker."

It was a forest all right. A densely packed expanse of trees in all directions.

All except for that one spot.

A small clearing, with a fairly sizeable house in the middle of it. A driveway that led into the trees right along where Jacob had drawn on his map.

Marcus snorted, shaking his head. The bird wasn't completely crazy, just mostly crazy. As for the map, zooming in didn't offer much more information. The image was fairly blurry, and to no surprise at all the street level view wasn't available. Come to think of it, he didn't really have any way of knowing that the chimera actually lived there. Just that there was a house there. Still, it was something. All he had to do now was make sure it was the right place.

The jackalope picked up his phone to check the time, and see how many more messages he'd have to swipe away. It was later than he expected, having napped for several hours. There was only one message. One from Corey. It said that there were police at Greenwood, and they were looking for him.

Marcus's throat went dry. He couldn't ignore that one. So he quickly tapped out a response, asking what Corey had told them.

[i didn't have anything to tell them! where the fuck are u?]

Marcus's heart was beating rapidly.

[i'm fine, don't worry about me. just don't say shit to the cops.]

He waited.

[what do u mean? marcus this is freaking me the fuck out what's going on?]

[i just gotta do some stuff. i'll be back next week. don't tell anyone you talked to me.]

[dude ppl think you might be dead i can't just not say anything.]

Marcus took a breath. He was feeling his chest tighten.

[dude?]

Marcus looked down at his phone, tapping one last message.

[fine. tell them i'm alive, you don't know where i am, and i'll be back next week. don't message me again, i won't answer.]

He sent the text, and turned off his phone. Suddenly there was a ticking clock hanging over his head. The cops were looking for him. He was going to have to be very careful any time he wasn't in Temptations. If his face showed up on the news, it would be incredibly difficult for him to stay hidden. He had to come up with a plan, and he had to come up with it fast.