Brian sat stoically as Dr. McCarthy recounted her observations of the previous evening. He calmly listened as Dr. Patterson related Brian's arrival at the hospital. He waited matter-of-factly while Justin painfully wove a story of disappearance and abandoned vehicles, of a drunken rendezvous with a bar whore, of nearly assaulting Michael, of speaking like an Irishman. He passively heard it, and aggressively dismissed it.

"You are all insane! You are all fucking insane!"

 "Brian..."

"Justin, I don't know what shit you are all trying to pull here, but that's all it is... shit!"

"Bri..."

"No. No. You think I walked away from my business? From my son? From my fucking life? Hell, no. Fucked up on some bad shit from Anita? Maybe. But being someone else? Pretending to be some Irish speaking prick and practically fucking some whore, some woman in a bar? Christ, Jus! No. I'm fucking fine!"

"You are not fucking fine, Brian! You've been a walking pharmaceutical company for most of your life! You never acted like this!"

"Yeah, well. There's always a first time." Suddenly he just didn't care anymore.  

Brian's anger dissipated as quickly as it appeared. Now he was... What? Exhausted? Apathetic? Disconnected? All of the above?

His head was again throbbing and he just wanted them gone. Away. To be left alone. He raised his hand, pinched the bridge of his nose, clenched his jaw. Were they lying to him? Why would they lie about this? He knew they had to be playing him, but he couldn't think of one goddamned reason why they would. Why Justin would! Jesus... He was just so fucking confused. Brian squeezed his eyes shut and rested his head back on the bed.

"Just go away." But there was no power behind his command, no emotion in the words.

Alice McCarthy stood back and observed it all. Kinney's response, his interaction with Justin, his confusion and, finally, his apparent resignation. Now, she thought, now is the time to approach him.

"Mr. Kinney? Did you assault your friend yesterday?"

"Wha..? No. Of course not."

"Did you destroy the phone in this room yesterday?"

"No."

"Who did those things, Mr. Kinney?"

"How the hell would I know?" Shit. He could feel his anxiety returning. Fuck. Them. All.

"There were several witnesses to both those incidents. If you weren't involved, who was?"

"I don't fucking know! Drop it!" Brian covered his ears trying to block out the incessant questioning. His head was throbbing from the aggravation and he really, really just wanted a drink.

"Who was involved, Mr. Kinney?" Dr. McCarthy paused. Then asked again, "Who was it that did these things, Mr. Kinney?"

Brian's hands came away from his ears, wrapped around the back of his head, elbows sticking out like ears on a cat, and he stared hard at Dr. McCarthy.

And grinned.

In a high, breathy voice he said as he winked, "You know, he just really wants a Beam right now. Give him that and he will si-innnggg like a nightingale."

In the background, Justin felt his heart stop beating and Dr. Patterson felt his speed up.

Alice McCarthy took one step toward the bed and asked, "Who are you?"

The man lying in the bed blinked his eyes, tilted his head sharply to the left, and smirked.

"I'm Trick, chick. Who are you?"

*******

Emmett sat alone in ‘the' booth at the diner and watched Kiki dart back and forth between the kitchen pass-through and the various tables full of colorful late morning diners. Pink plate specials and cheeseburgers, lemon bars and milkshakes balanced in her arms, and the skirt of her retro uniform billowing out as if it was supported by dear Aunt Lula's crinolines. He wrenched his head to the side, lowering it almost to the bench seat trying to look under the skirt to see if there actually were crinolines flushing out that skirt. And he felt incredibly lonely. Teddy was carrying so much more of the Kinnetic workload since he had returned from his cat's-away-so-the-mouse-will-play vacation and Emmett missed him. He missed everyone. For days...and in some cases, weeks...there had been no one sitting here with him to snark at his queenishly high-school antics. There had been no one sitting here making fun of his cock size or his theatrics or his habit of eating a doughnut with knife and fork. No Michael or Debbie or Justin or...

He lay his head back against the wall of the diner, stretching his long legs across the length of the seat, hanging his feet off the other side... and tried to make sense of this family predicament. They were all told that Brian had been located and was in the hospital. And yes, Debbie had assured him, Brian was unhurt. But that just couldn't be entirely true. It didn't take a genius to figure out that Brian was in the hospital for some reason. Neither did it take a genius to realize that the absence of everyone else was directly related to that reason.

No, Emmett never even thought to consider himself any sort of genius. He did, however, believe that his intuition was a teensy bit more developed than most others', and right now that intuition had every hackle on his body raised and waiving white flags in surrender. There had never really been a problem with Brian Kinney before - well not a problem that everyone was apparently as helpless to decipher as this. Brian was the one who handled everyone else's problems - whether they knew it or not.  Getting Teddy out of jail. Finding a way for Michael to open his comic book store. Paying for Justin's tuition. Brian's own issues, however, were regarded by everyone as so much spew from some personal propaganda machine. But Emmett had become increasingly aware of just how integral that propagandized Kinney was to the health and wellness of their little family. A little family that he suddenly envisioned as a very large, very cracked Humpty Dumpty, waiting for all the king's horses and all the king's men.

And the king was in the damned hospital.

*******

Carl Horvath reached across his cluttered desk and retrieved the documents being offered to him by his old friend. As he waited for the detective to finish reading and draw his conclusions, Kaz realized he still hadn't heard from Justin Taylor. But he really wasn't surprised that he hadn't. Taylor had enough on his plate at the hospital with Kinney. As far as the investigator knew, there still hadn't been any news issued, even to the family, as to what was really going on with Kinney. When the news did come out though, he knew in his gut that it wasn't going to be simple. Or pleasant. When anything about this got out to the public... Christ!

"You trust this guy in Chicago? This Pete?" Kaz was brought back to present when Carl spoke.

"Yeah. He's good," Kaz confirmed. "Something went on there, Horvath. You know it and I know it. I really can't wrap my head around Brian Kinney standing on a street corner begging for alms."

"I agree. Didn't seem likely in the first place... Now it seems even more unlikely. Don't really know what it has to do with what's going on with Kinney now, though." Like Kaz, Carl new that there were few reasons to doctor an official police report, and none of them was on the up-and-up. "I want to keep this between us right now, Kaz."

"No reason to make it official, but Taylor needs to know. Especially with what's happening to Kinney right now. He goes missing then for four days and he goes missing now for a week? And from what Pete reports, his source said Kinney was pretty much in a panic, claiming to be someone else when he was brought in." Kaz shook his head slightly and leaned in toward the detective. "A bit too coincidental, I'm thinking."

"Okay. So we tell Justin what we know now. I'm assuming you have Pete or someone else working on finding the reason for the discrepancy?"

"He's on it."

"Do me a favor, Krawczynski. Give Justin what you have. But... talk to me before you go to him or anyone with whatever else you find out. At least until we know what we're looking at."

"Another favor?" the investigator stood and shook hands with the detective. "You know you're never getting me paid off, don't you?"  

*******

Justin wanted more than anything right now to paint. A canvas, the walls, the floor - anything. To get a little color back into a life that had suddenly slipped away into gray. Stark. Depressed. Shadowed. He just knew Rod Serling was standing in some corner smoking a cigarette, ready to cue god-awful eerie intro music, and some disembodied voice was hovering over a television test pattern, promising to return control of his life back to him after the last commercial interruption. Nothing else made sense. It was all just pretend and he was stuck inside some freakish imitation of reality.

Yet it was not pretend. It was Brian's face. His hair, hands, lips - Brian's body. But it wasn't Brian.

Trick.

If it wasn't so fucking terrifying, Justin would have laughed at the poetic justice of that particular name.

Trick.

Dr. McCarthy holding a conversation with ‘Trick'. Brian's trick. Who looked like Brian. Who was Brian. Who wasn't Brian.

Breathe... just breathe...

"Hey, blondie looks like's he's losing it over there."

Justin shuddered at the high breathiness of the odd voice. Dr. Patterson moved toward Justin and placed a steady hand beneath one elbow.

"I'm okay," he tried to convince himself.

Dr. McCarthy continued to focus on Trick. At the moment Justin could not be her main concern.

"It's good to meet you, Trick. I'm Alice."

"And you're ten feet tall*" Trick sang the words quietly and laughed. Even the laugh had a breathy quality.  

"You like the Airplane, Trick?"

"Yeah."

"Does Brian like the Airplane, too?"

Justin tensed at the question, not even really sure why. It just seemed so... twisted... for this woman to be speaking to Brian and yet not. God, he wanted to sit down, to support himself against something, to ease off the nausea rising in him - but he was afraid to move. Afraid to disrupt. Afraid that it would somehow make it real. He could only stare at Brian - Trick - this other - who somehow didn't even look like Brian anymore. He wasn't real. He wasn't.

"Shhhh..." One finger laid across lips, Trick shushed Dr. McCarthy. "Don't wake them up."

"Them? Are there others?" The psychiatrist was very surprised with such an admission so quickly. She knew, of course, that there were probably others, but she didn't expect Trick to mention them so easily. And she wasn't surprised by the sudden silence on Trick's part, or by the slight flicker of panic that crossed the eyes.

"And you've just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low," Trick sang again softly, absently picking at a loose thread on the rough hospital blanket, eyes darting frantically around the room. Trick paused, then looked up directly into Justin's eyes and continued. "Go ask Alice, I think she'll know."

 *     Lyrics from White Rabbit. Grace Slick