Written in 58 minutes. Spell checked, but not reread for typos. I’m gonna be honest here, y’all, this is one story where I am flying by the seat of my pants. I have no idea what’s next.

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Mykonos, Greece: Flat

Jason cradled Elizabeth’s head with one hand while taking in the wound to her abdomen. With gritted teeth, not taking his eyes off the woman bleeding out in front of him. “Get him away from me or this time he’s not coming back from the dead.”

With tears streaming down her face, Laura helped Luke shove a struggling and still bellowing Lucky down the hall. She shoved her son and her ex-husband into the bedroom, turning back to Jason. “How bad is it?”

“Sonny—” Jason looked at his best friend as the older man knelt on Elizabeth’s other side, taking her wrist in his, monitoring her pulse. Spinelli hovered in the background, biting at his nails.

“Pulse is thready, but there—” Sonny exhaled on a hiss. “I didn’t see how long the blade was. If we pull it out—looking at where it is—”

“Where’s Patrick?” Jason demanded. “Laura, call—”

“I’m already on the line—” Her face pale, but her fingers steady, Laura had pressed Robert’s contact information and put the phone on speaker. “Robert?”

“Laura—”

“Where are you? Elizabeth’s been stabbed and we could use a surgeon.”

“What the hell—” came Patrick’s shout from the background. “How the hell—”

Jason ignored that, and focused on Elizabeth. “Elizabeth? Can you hear me?” Not like this. He couldn’t lose her like this—not after everything—not before they could bring Jake home—

On a low, soft moan, her eyelids fluttered, then closed. Her face scrunched. “Hurts.”

“What do you think? It’s not high enough for the liver—”

“But it might be deep enough to hit the kidney—”

“Patrick is five minutes out,” Laura said, coming to them, getting down on her knees. “What can I do? How can I help?”

The bleeding had slowed, and Jason calculated how much had actually pooled beneath her. “She’s not—she’s not bleeding out. At least not that I can see. If I pull out the knife, that could change—” He knew how to compartmentalize. How to put things into pockets in his brain and separate out the now from the fear and the worry.

He just couldn’t manage it for longer than a minute or two before it all came flooding back in, and the terror swamped him. He couldn’t go home without her. Couldn’t look in Cameron’s sober eyes and tell him his mother wasn’t coming back—

“Elizabeth, can you look at me? Just open your eyes—”

Her lashes fluttered again and a sliver of the blue was visible. “Make…it…stop.”

“I will, I promise. Patrick will be here, and he’ll help me stop it. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get Jake and take him home to his brothers.”

“Jake.” Elizabeth’s head lolled to the side as she drifted again. “Jake. Wanted to…see him…hold him—”

“You will,” Laura promised. She pressed a fist to her mouth as Sonny put a hand around her shoulders. “Elizabeth, we’re going to bring him home—”

“Cam…” Elizabeth forced her eyes open, found Jason’s. “Cam. Don’t…can’t leave him.”

“You’re not going to—”

The door behind them shoved open as Patrick stormed in, followed by Robert Scorpio and Anna Devane.

“What the hell is going on?” Patrick demanded as he skidded across the floor to Jason’s side.

Laura struggled to her feet, with Robert’s help. “Lucky did this,” she said to Robert and Anna in a low voice.

“I guess that’s the shouts and grunting I hear—” Robert said, squinting in the direction of the closed door. “Is that where Spencer is?”

“He could use a hand,” Laura said, her voice calm and steady, unlike her hands which were trembling as she turned back to the crowd on the ground. “Lucky tried to stab Jason, but Elizabeth got in the way.”

“We’ll sort this out,” Anna promised Laura. “Trust Patrick—”

“Okay, okay—it’s—” Patrick took a deep breath. “Spinelli, you need to get me something like looks like a scalpel—sterilize it. I need towels. I need—shit—” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I need to wash my hands. I need something to sew. Needles, thread—”

“We’ve got an emergency kit, Patrick. It has everything.” Anna pulled her son-in-law to his feet and went with him to wash her hands.

“This is my fault,” Laura said, staring down at Elizabeth’s prone figure. Jason looked at her, frowning. “I listened to Luke. She already begged us not to make her do this again. She didn’t come here to take on the Cassadines. I should have told Luke to keep Lucky away.”

“As soon as I know she’s okay, I’m going to the island, I’m getting my son,” Jason said, tightly, “and I’m taking her home. You can save the world without us. She and the boys are all that matters.”

“Jase—” Sonny put a hand on his shoulder. “She’s too stubborn to go out like this—” But his voice faltered because even he knew the universe didn’t give a shit about that kind of thing.

“All right.” Patrick turned away from the sink. “We need to move her to higher ground so I can get a better look at things. Clear that table—” he nodded at the longer table against the wall. Jason, Sonny—at either end. Laura, I need you to make sure that knife doesn’t move a centimeter. Spinelli—” He looked at the pale, oddly quiet tech. “Whatever you were doing to find Robin and Jake, get back to it. When she wakes up, she’ll want to know the plan.”

“Got it,” Spinelli said, swallowing hard.

“I’ve done brain surgery by flashlight at gunpoint,” Patrick said, “and my patient lived—” He met Jason’s eyes. “This is a cake walk. Let’s get to work.”

Cassadine Island: Lab

Nikolas paced the stretch of the room, glaring at Robin as she poured over notes and codes. “This can’t be this hard. I need to get Jake off this island.”

“That’s the goal, Nikolas, but you can’t rush this. And remember—by now my parents and Patrick have to be in Greece. I hope like hell he brought Jason and Elizabeth. We’ll get off this island and they’ll be ready with an escape route home.”

She turned back to her research. “I just don’t know how some of this computer stuff works. I never listened when Spinelli talked. I just made him do everything.”

“We just need to get past security long enough to get down to the docks. Once we’re on one of the boats, I can have us in Mykonos in thirty minutes.” Nikolas closed his eyes. “Valentin is coming, Robin. He’s the last piece of the puzzle.”

“Nikolas—”

“It’s my fault. I kept waiting. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t say anything when I found my father. I didn’t say a damn word when my grandfather showed up—but Jake.” His terrified eyes found Robin’s. “She sits him at the table like he’s part of the family. I promised him I’d get him home—”

“And we will—”

“I should have told Jason ages ago. I just—” Nikolas sat on the cot where Robin slept. “I wanted to be the hero,” he admitted. “I wanted to be the one who brought the Cassadines down. Permanently. And I wanted to bring Jake home to Elizabeth.”

“You were selfish and stupid—” Robin looked over as another monitor beeped. Her smile spread as she recognized the code.

thinking of changing pain in the ass to phoenix we landed baby and I brought the whole damn army sit tight we’ll get you out of this

“It’s Patrick,” she breathed. “He’s here. Oh, God, he’s here, and we’re going to be okay—” Her breath caught as she typed back in response.

will buy you all the race cars you want. maybe even a real one i love you we’re waiting for instructions

“Robert and Anna are with him, I’m sure.” Nikolas took his first easy breath. “Okay. I hate to leave you—”

“But you need to stick as close to Jake as you can. I’ll get word to you through Stefan when he brings my meals.” Robin got to her feet. “We’re too close to being done with this—”

“We just need to be gone before Valentin lands tomorrow,” Nikolas reminded her. “Tell Patrick we’re on a deadline. Whatever Helena and Mikkos are planning—it starts when Valentin gets here.”

“I’ll tell him.”

Mykonos: Flat

Robert and Luke emerged from the bedroom, grim-faced. Luke had a black eye while Robert’s shirt had a tear in the sleeve

“Where’s Lucky?” Laura demanded.

“Handcuffed, tied up, bound, gagged, and sedated,” Robert said. He examined. “Bastard bit me.” He nodded at the table where Elizabeth was laying, a sheet pulled over her and her head resting on the pillow. “What about Elizabeth?”

“Is she okay?” Luke asked.

Jason glared at him. “No thanks to you. How many times are you going to make Lucky Spencer her problem to fix? He did her one good turn fifteen years ago, Luke. Don’t ask her to do this again.”

“I—” Luke swallowed. “I won’t, but—”

“The knife wasn’t as long as we thought,” Patrick told him, washing his hands. “Missed the organs, just took in the meat.”  He sighed as Laura shuddered. “Sorry.”

“No, better than the alternative,” Laura began as Patrick pulled his phone from his pocket, grimly. “What is it?”

“Robin. She sent me a reply earlier, but I didn’t see it and she just sent another one—” He stared at it. “We need to get them out now. She says whatever is going to happen starts tomorrow. They’re just waiting on Valentin.”

“I hate deadlines,” Robert muttered. “What’s the plan? Spinelli, what does security look like?”

“While Patrick was finishing up, I got the specs on the security cameras and got through the network.” Spinelli twisted on in his chair. “I got eyes on the whole island.”

“Where—” Jason started across the room, but Spinelli put a hand up.

“I got it up on the flat screen—bigger monitor,” he explained as he switched on the screen in the front of the room. “Island has one dock area where boats are kept, but there are a few inlets where I think you could land some people. Particularly if you’re coming in low-tech.” Spinelli brought up a a satellite image that highlighted the areas he talked about. “The building we saw on the plane—”

He flicked the camera to the front entrance as Nikolas emerged. He turned to talk to someone inside, then walked away. “No cameras inside that I can see, but—” He flipped to another one. “This cottage near the maze has cameras in the common space, and in—” Spinelli swallowed hard as he brought the image on screen.

A little boy with light blond hair was surrounded by toy cars and trains, his face lit up with smiles and laughter.

“This is—” Jason swallowed hard as he drank in the image of his son. “This is right now.”

“Right this second, Jake is in the cottage on the edges of the Cassadine estate,” Spinelli said his own voice a bit wobbly. He cleared his throat. “The cottage is less than a thousand feet from one of the landing spots I highlighted.”

“The other building where Nikolas was—” Patrick hesitated. “How far from the cottage?”

“About half a mile. The whole island is maybe a mile long,” Spinelli clarified. “And I agree, the messages the good doctor has been sending you are from that part of the island. Robin is in that building.”

“We’ll land two boats,” Anna decided. “One team to go in after Robin, and the other gets Jake. We get them off the island and we regroup. They’re more important than whatever the Cassadines might be planning.” She paused, looking at Laura. “Unless Nikolas is with one of them—”

“We can’t get him on this trip,” Laura confirmed. “Jason, I’m sure you and Sonny will go for Jake. I’ll go with you. Patrick, Robert, Anna—”

“I have to go.”

The slurred voice came from behind them as they turned to find Elizabeth struggling to sit up, wincing as she propped herself up on her elbows.

“Careful,” Patrick hissed, rushing to her side. “You’ll tear the stitches—”

“You can sew me up later—” Elizabeth swung her legs over the side. “I’m going.”

“Elizabeth,” Jason began but she shook her head.

“No. No. A thousand feet. I can manage that. I can. And Jake—” Her voice shook. “He might not remember you, Jason. He won’t know Sonny or Laura. He knows me. He’ll come with me quietly.” She held Jason’s eyes. “I need to be there. We’ll come home, and Patrick can patch me up on the way back to Port Charles. Once we get Robin and Jake off the island, we need to be in the air as soon as we can.”

“She’s right,” Anna said. “If we have a prayer of pulling this off, we need to be off that island before they even know we’re there. Spinelli—”

“I can loop security cameras and distract any guards. I wish I had more time to know how people move and find a safe time—” Spinelli grimaced. “But we can make it work.

“We can’t take the chance of Jake struggling because he doesn’t know you,” Anna told Jason with regret.

Jason dipped his head. They were right, and he only had himself to blame. Jake had been gone almost two years—there wasn’t even much of guarantee he’d know Elizabeth but— He looked at her. “All right,” he said finally. “Let’s get down to it. We’ll get Robin the details so she can be ready and do what she can on the island to help. Let’s get our son.”

Cassadine Island: Off the Coast

Ignoring the stabbing pain in her side, Elizabeth watched as Laura navigated the boat to a slow stop, floating about fifty feet from the inlet that Spinelli had highlighted on the map. Jason and Sonny got the rubber, motor dinghy into the water.“Laura, I need you to promise me something.”

Laura looked at her and shook her head. “Absolutely not. Don’t you dare say anything stupid like leave you behind if I need to. I’m not going back to my grandsons without you. And if  you think Jason would leave you—”

“He’ll put Jake first, just like I am.” Elizabeth closed her eyes, took another bracing breath. “I’ll get to the cottage. I know I can make it that far. But I don’t know if I can make it back—”

“Elizabeth—”

“I’ll get Jake to Jason, and I’ll make sure he’s safe. I’ll try like hell to get back, but Laura—”

“In the unlikely event that you don’t get back to the boat, I will get Jake off the island—”

“You asked me to save your son a long time ago,” Elizabeth said and Laura blanched. “I’m asking you to make sure you save mine.”

“You don’t fight fair,” Laura whispered fiercely. “But I didn’t either.”

“We’re mothers. We can’t afford to.”

“Ready?” Jason asked, taking Elizabeth’s hand. He squeezed it. “I’m going to lower you into the dinghy—Sonny is waiting—”

“Ready. Let’s get our son.”

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