Pacing the living room in his Burberry wingtips, Kurt starts wearing a path in the knotty pine floor. He holds his cell phone to his ear with his right hand and kneads his pinched brow with the fingers of his left. A song by Imagine Dragons plays over the line while he waits for someone to pick up, and Kurt has to tighten his grip on his phone to keep from throwing it across the room. Fucking ring back song, Kurt thinks. He can never remember the words to this one, so it becomes irritating when it goes on too long.

The song cuts off when the man he called picks up, and Kurt pounces.

“Chase?” Kurt says when he hears a tired, “Hello?” come through the receiver. “Yeah, we got home alright. Listen, I have a question - did you see anybody slip something to Blaine tonight? … What? … No, it’s just … something happened to him when we left, and I’m a bit worried … Kevin? You think Kevin maybe? ... That rat bastard! No, I won’t tell him you said anything … Okay, thanks … He will be, but I’ll let Blaine know.”

Blaine listens from the bedroom as Kurt disconnects that call and starts immediately on another, barely letting the poor sap on the other end of the line say, “What’s up?” before Kurt tears into him.

“Kevin … yeah, hey … no, I’m not really doing all that good. Look, tell me honestly - did you give Blaine something? … Because if you did, I need to know what it was in case I have to take him to the hospital ... No, I’m not joking. I’m damn serious, Kevin. Something happened to him tonight, and it messed him up … Well, he was acting like he’d dropped something, except I know he didn’t because I was with him all night … No, I don’t care what you think! If you put something in his drink and I find out about it, I swear to God, I’m going to break into your apartment and pop the buttons off every one of those tacky Dolce and Gabbana shirts you think go with everything … then I’m going to kill you!”

Blaine chuckles into his pillow, nearly giving himself away. He’s supposed to be asleep. He thought after he got home he’d be well on his way.

Blaine had been a mess in the parking lot, even after the specter of Kitty had faded. No matter how hard Kurt tried, no matter what he said to soothe his boyfriend, what he promised he’d do to make things better, he couldn’t get Blaine to calm down. Kurt managed to get Blaine into the car and ended up driving them home while Blaine did the only thing he could do - passed out for the entire ride, not opening his eyelids an inch until they got back to their apartment. The whole trip home, Blaine’s mind stayed blank up until he had to wake up. Then the visions came back with a vengeance, snapping at him as if they had teeth. When he regained consciousness, he had a feeling in his gut, wedged down deep where other far more innocent premonitions in his life had come from, that what he had seen in the parking lot wasn’t a hallucination.

It was real.

Somewhere in the world had been a woman named Kitty, and Blaine had witnessed her murder. He saw her get shot. He saw her bleed. He watched her die.

And even though she was dead, somehow she needed his help.

Jake needed his help.

Blaine had to find Jake.

These are facts, clues to a puzzle he doesn’t understand, but that he has an urgent need to solve.

He feels like lives may depend on it. Lives close to him.

When they got home, Kurt put Blaine immediately into a shower, and after multiple assurances that he’d be okay, left him alone to bathe, to cry or scream, whatever he needed to do. He made Blaine a mug of steamed milk - not because Blaine likes it, but because Kurt needed something to do, otherwise he might have a mini-break down himself. Blaine finished with his shower, and Kurt sat with him on their bed while he drank. Then Kurt tucked him under the comforter, and kissed him goodnight.

Kurt goes straight into Mother Hen mode whenever Blaine falls the slightest bit ill, and Blaine is grateful for that. He needed it. He needed to know that Kurt was in his corner, and he was. He didn’t judge Blaine for his break down. Blaine knew Kurt wouldn’t. He tried to explain what he meant about Kitty and Jake, the things that he saw, even though he had no rational way of explaining them or understanding them. Kurt listened, and he tried to make sense out of it, but Blaine was in no condition for a lengthy discussion on the subject. So Kurt sat beside him in silence, holding Blaine’s hand until his eyes grew heavy, only leaving him when he felt sleep was inevitable. But as soon as Blaine heard Kurt leave the room, he opened his eyes again. He couldn’t relax. He was spooked. He knew he was at home, in his apartment, but he felt detached, disconnected, like part of him was somewhere else.

He was afraid that other part might be with Kitty.

He didn’t want to close his eyes. Every time he did, he saw Kitty staring back at him, as if she was sitting right in front of him, holding his hand instead of Kurt, whispering in his ear the same words over and over – “Find Jake. Help Jake. Please, do this for me.”

Blaine knows he isn’t going to sleep tonight. He’ll make himself stay up if he has to put lit cigarettes out on the back of his hand. He can’t see her again – her eyes growing dim as the life inside them goes out; the hole in the center of her forehead breathing smoke, and all that blood gushing down her face, painting streaks on her skin.

Her pale skin. Pale like Kurt’s. With lifeless eyes, blue like Kurt’s. It’s too easy to mistake Kurt for her, or her for Kurt, in Blaine’s traumatized mind.

When Kurt thought that Blaine was finally drifting off, he stepped out into the living room and started making calls to every friend they’d hung out with at the club that night, determined to find out if someone had slipped Blaine something without them knowing. Blaine had already told Kurt that he didn’t think so. In the beginning, Blaine couldn’t be 100% sure, but something in his bones said that this wasn’t a bad trip. Whatever he saw, as inconceivable as it seemed, was real. But that was the way Kurt worked. It’s not that he wasn’t open to the possibilities, it’s just that he needed to eliminate the easily explainable first.

And regardless of whatever history Kurt had with their friends, he wasn’t afraid of dumping every single one to protect his man.

Blaine loves that about him.

Kurt makes his final phone call, berates his last “suspect”, and decides to pack it in for the night. He doesn’t want to leave Blaine alone. He takes a quick rinse off and climbs into bed. He wraps Blaine up protectively in his arms and holds his boyfriend against him. As far as Kurt is concerned, whatever wants to hurt Blaine, mess with his head and tear him to pieces, is going to have to do it over Kurt’s dead body. Lying in Kurt’s arms, soaking in the heat from Kurt’s skin fresh from the shower, filling him with warmth, comfort, and a love that blankets all, Blaine is almost fine to go to sleep. He can just about fall out into dreamless oblivion with Kurt there as his anchor, tethering him to reality. As long as he’s with Kurt, everything can return to normal again.

Everything will be fine.

“Kitty …”

The voice weaves in and out of Blaine’s head, buzzing through his sinuses.

“Kitty, where are you?”

It’s right inside his ears, but then it’s farther away, traveling off into the distance. Blaine opens his eyes and looks around, as much as he can without disturbing Kurt’s sleep, but he doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary - just his half of the bedroom, softly lit from a lamp outside.

Kurt forgot to close the blackout curtains, Blaine thinks, but then the light goes from white to blue. It flickers, as if a bulb from outside has begun to burn out.

Like that streetlamp over Blaine’s BMW in the parking lot of the club.

“Ja-ake,” a voice sings back. “Come get me, Jake …”

Blaine feels himself get up and start walking, but he’s also lying in bed beneath Kurt’s distressed print comforter, with his boyfriend’s arm draped over his torso. Blaine’s footsteps start to drag, becoming heavy and loud, like he’s wearing metal-soled shoes, and walking across a cement floor.

“Where are you, Kitty?”

A giggle – girlish, childlike – answers his question.

“Don’t make me come find you.”

“Awww, but finding is where the fun is, Jakey.”

Blaine hears footsteps run away from him, lighter than his own, and he considers giving chase - why, he has no idea. But then others join them. The first set slows as the others catch up. There’s a scuffle, then a thud, several thuds, and the giggles turn in to screams.

A loud bang, like a metal pot dropping onto the ground, echoes through the building, except it’s not a metal pot, and Blaine knows it. He’s heard that sound once tonight already, and he’ll never forget it. A gunshot. It’s a gunshot.

Somewhere in this creepy, deserted building, where Blaine walks unprotected and alone, someone has been shot.

“Kitty? Kitty!?” a man cries. “Oh, God no! Oh, please, no! Kitty!”

Blaine follows that voice, those cries, even as they bounce around him, making the direction of their source unclear. But he’s not following the sound, he realizes. He’s following the emotion welling up within him when he hears them, when they shoot inside him and poke holes into his soul. He’s following himself, because for a second, he’s the person screaming. He’s the man weeping, tears dripping down his cheeks, wetting a spot on the floor that’s covered in old, sticky blood. Kitty’s blood. Blaine blinks and he sees her there, lying with her eyes wide open while everything else about her shuts down.

Crouching beside the stain, holding his hand out as if he’s caressing her face, Blaine finds a young police officer. The officer looks up, dark eyes scanning Blaine from head to foot, eyebrows pulled together in the middle.

“Who are you?” the officer asks, putting a hand to his hip, hovering where his service weapon hangs in its holster.

Blaine should put his hands up, but he doesn’t. He should stop walking forward, but he can’t. What’s going on now shouldn’t be happening, so he figures those rules don’t apply.

“You’re Jake,” Blaine says. He should be asking, but he knows he’s right. Jake Puckerman. Kitty’s cop boyfriend.

“Yeah,” Jake says. “How did you …?” He stops himself and shakes his head. “Probably the same way I know that your name is Blaine. There’s a voice, and it whispers in my head when I look at you.” Jake looks away. “It’s her voice.” He stands, looking at Blaine one more time and noting his clothing, or lack thereof.

“Yes,” Blaine says. There is a voice. It’s not so clearly defined, but it’s there, and it belongs to Kitty. This voice links the two of them together, him and Jake, and Blaine fears it will never go away.

Having the voice of a dead woman in his head is not the way he wants to go insane.

“What are you doing here?” Jake brushes his hands together, trying to clear away the dust that attaches itself to everything the second you walk into the place.

“I … I don’t know. I mean, I assume I’m dreaming, and that you’re a part of that dream.”

“Yeah, well, that’s going around,” Jake grumbles. His eyes sweep the area, and Blaine feels compelled to copy him. They’re no longer in the dusty, abandoned warehouse. They’re in Blaine’s bedroom, and Blaine is still in bed with Kurt. “Nice place,” Jake says, not sounding at all surprised. “Is that a real Mitchell?” He motions over Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine knows exactly what painting Jake is referring to, but he looks anyway because it shouldn’t be there. But there it is, hanging behind him, because he’s back at his apartment. Or he is for a second. When he looks again, he’s with Jake in the warehouse, the switch happening so fast, Blaine’s head throbs.

“Yeah. It’s my boyfriend’s ...” Blaine stops short of telling Jake Kurt’s name. He isn’t sure he should have mentioned Kurt in the first place, or that he should tell Jake anything more than he already knows.

“He’s got excellent taste.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Jake sighs. “This was our place.” He looks at his feet, at the ground beneath him, visualizing paths he’d walked many, many times to get to the woman he loved. He could do it in the dark.

He just didn’t do it fast enough this time.

Blaine looks at the building around him. “You guys lived here?”

“No, but we met here,” Jake explains. “This spot is on my beat, so when we started seeing each other, she knew I’d be here eventually. She’d wait for me.” Jake reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. Swiping the screen, he brings up a picture of a young woman with bright, blues eyes, wavy blonde hair falling in front of her face, and a sneaky twist of a smile on her gloss-painted lips.

“Is that Kitty?” Blaine asks.

“Yeah,” Jake says. “Kitty Wilde. She was my girl, but I guess she belongs to all of us now.”

“Us?” A lump fills Blaine’s throat. He’d had a suspicion, a feeling there were more, not only him, but he wasn’t certain. “Who’s us?”

“You, me, them. You’ll see them. They’ll see you. You’ll find them … even when you don’t want to. She gave them to us. Now they’re ours, and we have to take care of them.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re being hunted.”

“Hunted!? By who?”

“By the men who killed Kitty. The real killers, not just the ones that put the bullet through her head.”

Blaine sees white flashes coming from Jake’s eyes, projecting images in his head:

Kitty wearing a hospital gown, handed a small paper cup of pills that she tosses to the floor, followed by a glass of water that she bats out of an unseen nurse’s hand.

Kitty tossing and turning on a gurney, her nose swollen and bloody.

Kitty struggling to escape while men in white coats strap her to a bed.

A doctor giving Kitty a shot in the arm, her blue eyes glowing a metallic silver, then bleeding at the corners.

Blaine shakes his head to get the images to stop, but they come at him faster, thoughts that belong to Jake, thoughts that belonged to Kitty, thoughts that belong to people he hasn’t met, their voices overlapping, some trying to get his attention, others wondering the same thing he is – What’s going on? Why? Why did this happen to me? I’ve never even met this woman! I want this to stop right now!

“Wait!” Blaine says, expressing out loud what he and all those other voices are thinking. “I didn’t sign up for this! I can’t do this!”

Jake simply stares at him, his face blank, his eyes exhausted, his mind done. Blaine can feel it.

“If not you,” Jake says, “then no one.”

“No,” Blaine says firmly. “I can’t. Look, I’m sorry about Kitty. I really am. But I can’t do anything about it. I can’t help you.”

“You have to.” Jake says it like, no matter what Blaine decides he wants, he has no choice.

“But why? Why do I have to?” another voice – a woman’s voice - argues. Blaine looks to his left, to a person who’s drawn Jake’s attention, and sees a heavyset black woman standing beside him, gesturing with her hands as she makes the same argument Blaine was about to make. “I was doing just fine until you guys dropped into my life, overcame a lot of crap to get where I am. I didn’t ask for this. Why should I help you? What’s in it for me?”

“What’s in it for you?” Jake laughs dryly. “You get to live, that’s what’s in it for you. Because if they find us, they’ll kill us.” Jake’s gaze flicks to Blaine, past his shoulder, then returns to his eyes. “Him, too.”

Blaine jerks his head around. The black woman is gone, and they’re suddenly in Blaine’s bedroom, Blaine sitting up in bed and Jake seated on the edge of his mattress. Blaine sees sleeping Kurt behind him, eyes closed, unconscious to the bizarre episode Blaine is having at this moment.

“Except that what they want, they want from you,” Jake adds, “so they might not let him off so easily.”

Blaine doesn’t want to know what Jake means, but his mind becomes overwhelmed with images of violence, torture, of Kitty before she died – beatings, rapes, ligature marks, rope burns on her wrists, her ankles, dug in deep. Bruises on pale skin that could be Kurt’s. Festering red blisters on hands that could be Kurt’s. Blackened skin around blue eyes that could be Kurt’s.

Kurt – Blaine’s safety net, his rock. They had such a relatively blasé life until about nine hours ago. How did things take such a weird turn? Why are they all of a sudden in danger?

Blaine doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to be a part of this at all. Maybe Jake can get him out of this somehow. Maybe he knows the remedy, the antidote to this … this … whatever it is he has now.

Maybe he knows how to severe the connection.

He has to. Blaine needs to keep Kurt safe because he’ll be damned if his boyfriend suffers the same fate as Kitty.

Blaine turns to Jake to ask him how. How does he get rid of this? How does he get his life back? How does he become normal again? But Jake – the man who loved Kitty, the man Blaine is supposed to save - is gone.