The guys were, in fact, very able to help. Hadrian sat down for breakfast with her long enough to tell her the good news. "I finally got an answer from Kyle. I know how to save you, Ash, if we can manage it." She stared at him over her plate of powdered eggs and what passed for bacon. "How?" "Whatever happens in there, you have to find a way to use your powers to insulate yourself from it. Destroy drugs with it, bounce things off of a shield, that sort of thing." Ashlyn looked at him straight on. "That's just so crazy it just might work. How'd she figure that one out?" Hadrian shrugged slightly. "She had a little help from a friend."
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Kyle wrapped her hands around the coffee mug and watched Thatcher over the rim of it. It was early as they sat together in a little diner near the precinct. He was itching to ask her something, she could tell. "What is it? I already told you I got word to Hadrian about how they can help Ash." He set down his cup and sat back in his chair. "I was wondering. Didn't you say that you had an idea of what Laren's powers might be?" She bit her lip. She certainly did. "I think that, if she's teamed with Hadrian and his powers, that the two of them could change the very fabric of time and reality." She was silent for a long moment. "I know that it sounds far-fetched, but I know for a fact that was what they wanted me for, because of what I could do before my powers developed along a different direction. Then I was just useful as a weapon coupled with his talent for seeing the future - it's sort of hard to dodge a shot that you didn't realize was coming." She closed her eyes tightly. "I know that they're going to hurt him, if this doesn't work right for them. The same as I know that they're hunting for me. I'm just afraid that they'll figure out, eventually, how close Hadrian and I really were." "And use him against you?" Kyle nodded, a single tear leaking out of her closed eyes and trickling down her cheek. "Well," the detective said, "I suppose we'll just have to make sure we bring that place down before that happens." Kyle nodded again, more emphatically this time. She truly believed that if they could not take the place down, her friends would die.
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Laren, meanwhile, cast a wary glance at where Ashlyn was sitting with Hadrian.