"WHO IS THIS?" Joe demanded again into the phone but found himself speaking to only static. The person on the other end had already hung up on him.

Around Joe his friends and his sister were staring at him, all of them looking anxious. Joe slammed his phone closed and threw it back into his bag, anger evident to everyone. It was all getting very old for him. It was getting old and he was no closer to finding his brother's assailant or the person responsible for attacking Mandy.

"Joe?" Mandy said, softly, concerned.

"Just the same old threat," Joe said, curter than he meant to be. "Get off campus or we die. Are you sure you won't go home, Mandy? Just until this is over?"

Mandy set her shoulders and glared at her twin, enough that Joe squirmed back into Vanessa's arm and held up his hands in surrender.

"I had to ask, you know," Joe told her. "I'm sorry, sis, but I am worried about you."

"And I don't worry about you?" Mandy asked, softly, her look betraying the sweetness in her voice. "Joe, it's a circle. We all worry about each other. Mom and Dad will be just as worried about us. Please, Joe, let's find this person and help Frank."

Joe took a deep breath and nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, willing for an idea, for some way to figure out who was behind this. They popped open a moment later and he looked at Connor.

"Does Doctor Rich have any idea where the powder came from? Can you ask? Have him check around for places that sell that?"

Connor sat up more straight. "I don't know if he knows, but I'll ask and I'll do some checking on my own. There has to be some way to track that down. I'll go over to the labs after my first class tomorrow."

Joe nodded. "'Nessa, I'd like you to coordinate with my Dad, find out the names of any people we've sent up who might have been released recently. When you get an initial list made, I can go over it with you. We'll need to narrow it down to people who might have a grudge against all of us. Mandy, did you get even a halfway decent look at the guy who attacked you?"

Mandy thought for a moment then shook her head. "I can get you the general height & weight of the guy who attacked me, but I didn't see a face. But I'll get you a sketch of what I did see, if that will help."

Joe nodded in agreement. "It'll help. Sam and Chet, I need legwork from you two. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like you both to talk to people at Tauhausen, see if anyone was outside on the day that the powder bomb came through the window and find out if anyone saw anything. Even a partial description would help."

"All right," Sam said, somewhat mystified. "I can do that tomorrow, I have some free time between my second and third classes and I can do some more in the evening, after I go sit with Frank."

"I'm in," Chet said.

"I'll call Con, again, and see if they were able to get anything out of the guy that Connor and I captured," Joe continued. "After that, I'm going to go through these sheets that you gave me, 'Nessa, and see if I can find out for sure if that has anything to do with what's happening. Hopefully, that's covering every angle we have to cover."

Joe exhaled sharply, glad to have that all covered. Maybe they could make this work.

He stood, finally and stretched.

"I'm going to go see Frank."

"Now?" Mandy protested. "It's late, they won't let you in!"

"I have to go now," he said. "Mandy, can you stay with Sam tonight? I don't think you should be in a room with just Elizabeth."

Mandy frowned, but looked over at Samantha who shrugged and nodded. "Sure, you can stay with me."

"I'll be by to take you to your first class tomorrow," Connor told her. "Do you want breakfast tomorrow?"

Mandy made a face at that. "And subject myself to an extra meal at Meller's? God save me."

Connor grinned. "Come on, girls, I'll walk you back to your dorm."

"Sir, visiting hours are over," the pretty nurse who stood at the nurse's desk outside of the ICU at Bayport General Hospital. "You'll have to come back in the morning."

"I just want to sit with him," Joe said, softly. "I won't disturb the other patient's, I just... I just need to see him, that's all."

The nurse frowned and looked around then back at him.

"I'll get in trouble if you get caught," she said in a low voice. "I really shouldn't let you in."

"I promise, I'll tell them I snuck past you if they say anything," he said. "But I need to see my brother. Please..."

The nurse sighed and finally gave him a short nod. He turned and went into the small room that held his brother. The door was open to the main ICU ward so that the nurses on duty could see him.

Joe pulled up a chair beside Frank's bed. He was lying with his eyes closed but they opened when he heard the chair move. He looked side-to-side, not seeing and tried to mumble something past the tube in his throat.

"It's me, Frank," Joe said as he laid a hand on top of his brother's.

Frank squeezed his fingers and looked toward him, though in that odd, eery way of blind people, he looked more past Joe than right at him. It was odd to sit there beside him, Joe thought, when he couldn't really communicate. He couldn't talk, he couldn't see to write. Joe really wanted to talk to his brother, but couldn't and that made him angry again. Connor's words that Frank may never get off of the tube down his throat made Joe even angrier. What did it take? Joe wondered. Just how had things gotten this bad?

He sighed and Frank squeezed his fingers again, trying to be comforting.

"We're trying to find the people who did this to you," Joe told him, finally, speaking in a soft voice so he didn't disturb any other patients. "I have everyone working on it. Vanessa, Sam, Connor, Mandy, Chet, we're all looking for them. Connor's tracing down the powder that hit you. It's bad stuff, Frank."

Frank squeezed his fingers again and raised his other hand to point to his nose.

"What is that, Frank?" Joe asked him.

Frank pointed to his nose again.

"The smell? Is that what you're talking about?" Joe asked.

Frank nodded.

"I smelled it," Joe said, puzzled. "It didn't have a smell."

Frank shook his head.

"You smelled something from it?" Frank nodded. "You recognize the smell?"

Frank nodded again.

Joe sighed and shook his head, then said, "You can't tell me what it is, Frank. I, uh, I mean..."

Frank batted his hand on the bed, then spelled out, slowly, in finger-spelling, 'M U S T A R D.'

Joe's brow furled almost immediately. "Mustard? I didn't..."

Frank pointed to his nose again and made an OK symbol with his fingers.

"Well, I guess you did smell it longer than I did," Joe admitted. "You're sure?"

Frank nodded.

"All right," Joe smiled then sobered when he realized that Frank couldn't see it. "I'll tell Connor. He didn't mention that to me when he was telling me about the breakdown of it. That's odd."

Frank shook his head.

"You think there's a reason he didn't smell it? More concentrated when you were hit or something?"

Frank nodded. 'L I N G E R E D' he spelled out with his fingers.

"I guess that's a good thing," Joe said. "If anything about this is good. Frank..."

He paused, remembering what Connor said, again. He didn't know if the Doctor had said anything to Frank. He felt, strongly, that his brother deserved to know.

"Frank..." Joe said. "Have the doctor's told you much about... about what happened to you? About what's wrong with you?"

Frank nodded, then shrugged. Joe took that to mean the doctor's had told him some, but not everything.

"Doctor Rich told Connor that the way the powder works... it expands in your lungs. That's why you had trouble breathing," Joe paused, going silent for a moment. All he heard was the sound of Frank's respirator and a beeping from the heart monitor.

Frank squeezed his hand and looked toward him again.

"Connor said... he said that unless they come up with a way to clean that stuff out of your lungs... he said you may be on that respirator for, well, the rest of your life."

He paused, too choked up inside to go on. There was little else to say anyway. He'd delivered the blow to his brother, now he had to hope that Frank was as strong as Joe hoped. That Frank would get past it. That he would beat it and defy what doctors said.

"Frank?" he said, softly. "I'm sorry."

Frank shrugged and squeezed his fingers again. Ever the older brother, Joe thought. He's the one injured, I'm the one getting comforted. Do big brothers ever let go?

"I know you can beat this," Joe told him. "I know you can."

Joe stayed with him for another half hour, until Frank had gone to sleep. Joe drove back to his dorm in a daze, as stunned now as he had been when Frank had first been injured. He parked his car and walked slowly toward the front door of Tauhausen Hall, stopping only when he got to the door. It was late enough he had to use his key to get in the front door.

As he pulled his key out of his pocket, someone pushed him from behind and he went flying into the door where he landed with a thud and slid down, silently.