Jamie poked his head into the rec room and grinned. There it was, in all its big screen glory, the TV of his dreams, complete with a few of the most popular gaming platforms. And for once no one was using it.

He ran and jumped over the back of the couch and landed on the cushions with a bit of a bounce. Jamie started going through the games spread out on the table and grinned as he saw one of his favorites from home. "Yes!"

It was a matter of seconds before he had the machine up and running. Once that was done he sat himself down and started fighting his way through the levels of the shooting game, with all the yelling and whooping and hollering he could muster.

Playing the game on a TV screen this big was so awesome! "Gotcha! Oh, yeah! You're goin' down, alien scum! Take that!"

Jamie was in ten year old heaven. So what if he had math homework waiting for him?

When Millie had gotten back, it had taken everything inside Jamie to not jump on her. Really, only two things had kept him from it: the fact that there were too many people around for him to get to her easily and she looked like she was hurt pretty bad. So, he'd sat outside the infirmary, waiting til he could see her. When Mr. McCoy let her out, he'd told Jamie to help her to her room because she needed to rest. So, Jamie had done that.

Now he was laying on her bed with her, in his brown puppy form, with his head on her lap. He'd put her Cookie doll on the pillow next to her head before he'd settled himself. He just wanted to be sure she was ok.

She cried when she was asleep. There were stitches on her chest and arm and lots of other little cuts that didn't need to be sewn together, but were angry and red on her skin. It made Jamie angry and he wanted to bite whoever had done this to her. She smelled like salt and blood and antiseptic.

Jamie didn't know how long he'd laid there before he fell asleep, too.

The grown ups had left what felt like days before, but really had only been a few hours. Jamie had sneaked into the hanger to watch the jet take off, but once it was gone he was at loose ends.

He'd tried to shoot some hoops, but hadn't been able to get into it. Reading and drawing had the same result. Even if he shifted, which usually made him very happy, he didn't feel anything but sadness and fear.

After a while he'd gone to the girls dorms and sat on Millie's bed for a while. It'd started to smell less like her and more like him the more he went there, but he couldn't help it. It made it feel like she was there or would be all right. He knew he was breaking the rules by sleeping in the girls dorm, but no one cared right now.

Jamie took her Cookie doll down with him and went to wait out on the front steps. He toyed with the doll's red skirt as he looked out at the dark sky. He wanted Millie back and ok. What was the point of God letting him find her if He was just going to take her away again? He wished that there was someone he could talk to, but everyone was so busy with everything else and he didn't want to be a bother. It was more important to get their friends and family back than it was to listen to him whine and cry like a baby. He knew that.

But that didn't make it easier to sit here and wait now that they knew where they were and had gone to get them.