Fade hadn't talked to Nef anymore, and the passing of girls in his private room had resumed as before. She had accepted it; she was just one of the many and not even one of his best conquests. She had disappeared from his life as silently as she had entered it; however, she made sure Jag gave her the bass player's copy of the key to her room.

One night she wandered into a scarcely lit neighbourhood, next to a small park. Without thinking it over too much, she turned to go back, but she saw a couple of people wearing hooded sweatshirts leaning on a corner of an alley, who were trafficking with something. She realized that she had been noticed, and she turned towards a secondary road. Unfortunately she found herself face to face with another couple of suspicious guys "Hey beautiful!" One of them approached her. The girl was about to go back from where she came, but the two guys she saw before were blocking her road. Being cornered, Fade could only put up a defence, ready to remove the knife if she felt it was necessary. That place wasn't her territory, and she was at a disadvantage.

"Hey, friend, what's that you have on your head?" The boy asked her, pointing to her weird hairstyle.

"Why are you here?" The other asked.

"For no reason," she replied, keeping her voice as firm as she could.

"No one comes here for nothing, beauty!" The third one said, as they all came close around her.

Fade pulled out the blade "Stay away from me!"

The four boys started for a moment, but then they tried to calm her down.

"Hey, sister, you don't need that."

"Yeah, we don't want to hurt you"

"Go away or you'll be sorry!" She yelled.

"Are you here for the dope? If you need it we'll sell it to you..."

"No drugs! Leave me alone!"

As two boys were about to leave, a third, taking advantage of a moment of distraction, grabbed her by the wrist, twisting her arm back. "Freeze! Police!" He exclaimed.

The other three guys lowered the guard, snorting "All we needed was a psychopath to blow our cover" were the last words she heard while she was pushed into a car.

After a first interrogation with which the police got nowhere, the agents just put the girl into a cell in order to try again the next morning.

Fade was sitting on a bench fixed to the wall, watching her skates slide back and forth. She didn't sleep all night while avoiding to guess what would happen to her. In the late morning, the sliding door of the cell reopened. She was escorted to an office and asked to sit in a room where a new agent was waiting for her.

"So, let's see," began the man in a uniform "Your name is Fade, you can't remember your last name, you are without documents and without a nation of origin, your parents died in an accident, you go around with a five-inch knife in your pocket and you used it to threaten my undercover men..."

"They surrounded me, mine was a legitimate defence," the girl said.

"We've analysed the traces of blood on your knife, and we found at least four types, which suggests that maybe the facts are not exactly so," he said. "Now let's start over again: your first and last name?"

Meanwhile, somewhere else, there was a loud, though unilateral, discussion.

"It's none of my business if the cops caught her!" Raged Nef, furiously. "Do you have any idea what I risk with your ridiculous plan? I'm constantly followed by paparazzi; I can't let myself be involved in such a scandal!!"

Jag, for his part, was calm and quiet "The papers are already drawn up, the bail is ready to be paid, I just need you to loan me your identity. You should do it, it would be a nice gesture towards her after all the suffering you caused her, don't you think?" He mocked him, knowing that he was hitting a weak spot.

The musician glared at him. "This story mustn't become public," he warned.

"Come on, you know better than me that a lot of money can open many doors and close as many mouths! I've already thought about everything!" The boy admonished him with a loud voice.

Nef still wasn't accustomed to his sudden changes of personality, but he chose his words well: he was right; he had agreed to sign a ridiculous five-year contract that tied him to that questionable investor, just because of the long row of zeros at the bottom of the proposed budget.

That same afternoon Fade was called back to the office.

"We have some news for you. Thanks to the extenuating circumstance of not having picked you up in flagrant delicto, we've placed a bailout for your release and someone has paid for it; he will also guarantee for you. The person in question is Neffen Shaw, who claims to be your brother by your mother, but of not being aware of your existence until you reached him in this city, asking for a place to stay because he is the only close relative alive. Do you confirm this version of the facts?"

"Yes?!" she replied confusedly. She knew that behind such a weird story there could only be Jag, but she found it even more absurd that the police believed it. Anyway she thought it wise not to add anything else.

"Well, your step-brother signed the statement. In order to get out, you also have to sign it, but I doubt that we can finish our paperwork if you refuse to tell us your name and surname."

Fade stared at her pass for a few seconds, then turned the sheet towards her and signed it. The agent withdrew the sheet and read "Jane Merrick. Alright, I'll get the paperwork done and in an hour you'll be out of here," he concluded.

Once the hour was up, the redhead was free. She had been instructed that there would be a black sedan with the four emergency lights on, parked in front of the police station waiting for her. When she went out she noticed it and moved towards it carefully. The glasses were dark and reflective and she couldn't see anything inside. The window lowered slightly showing Nef ridiculously camouflaged with sunglasses, scarf and a beret "Hello little sister!" He mocked her.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" She moved backwards, disappointed that he wasn't Jag.

"I'm risking my ass for you! Now if you can do me the favour of getting inside before someone notices us..."

"No way!"

"Then you need to know that if you don't get in this car right away, those agents waiting there are ready to bring you back into the cell!"

The girl turned and saw two policemen actually standing there. Every now and then one of the two spoke into the transmitter.

Drained by the night in the cell, she didn't feel like arguing longer, so she turned to the other side of the car and got in.

For the first few minutes of the trip they were in total silence. As usual, Nef interrupted it. "So, luckily we found out we were step-brother sister after we..." he hushed, noticing the girl's vicious gaze.

"Okay, I was just joking..." he said, concentrating on driving. "So your name is Jane..."

"Please, don't call me by that name," she replied in a low voice.

"Why not? It's cute..."

"Why did you make up this entire story, Mr Neffen Shaw?" She asked, changing the subject.

"Ask your little childish friend, it was all his idea. And then he said that I had to... Anyway," he continued. "We have to get you some documents, so we'll avoid this mess in the future. Ah, and by the way, why don't you try explaining why you're going around brandishing kitchen knives and how you got that beautiful needlepoint on your thigh?"

"I always liked playing with knives," she said in response to both questions.

"I find it very exciting."

"My passion for knives?" She asked.

"Your scar. I have to say that I found it odd in the beginning, but then It really aroused me when I saw such a violent scar on such a small body."

The girl couldn't stand his exaggerated sincerity and didn't really want to bring up what had happened between them. Besides, she had lost her knife, which caused her an extraordinary anxiety. That knife meant a lot to her, she was tied to it with a nearly sacred bond. It was her 'cross', using Nef's words.

She had to recover it at all costs.

"I want my knife" she interrupted the silence.

"What?"

"Go back and get me my knife back!" She ordered.

"Are you crazy?" He also raised his voice. "You want me to go back to the police station to claim a seized object?"

"Just do it!"

Nef stopped furiously to one side of the street and began to shout at the girl. "Do you have shit in your brain? Do you realize the trouble that I would get into? For what then? For you to keep running out at night to threaten other people?"

"It's none of your business!" She shouted, trying to open the front door of the car, previously locked.

"Yes it is! Since you are under my fucking custody, Jane Merrick!"

"Don't call me that!" She yelled hysterically, beginning to beat her fists on the glass.

The man grabbed her by the hands, pulling her towards him, trying to stop her. "Calm down, now! Take it easy!" He said, softening his voice and easing the grip "Calm down and tell me what's wrong with you, Fade."

The girl stopped fighting him abandoning any resistance.

The bass player leaned an elbow on the window the next few minutes and looked out while he listened to what the girl told him through her sobs. He massaged his temples with his thumb and index, while with his other hand he tapped nervously on his thigh. He found out that after the death of her parents in an accident, she was locked up in a psychiatric institution from which she escaped after a year and sneaked into a train that led her to a hostile metropolis and all she had gone through before finding an accommodation. Hunger, grime, drifting, illness, and hand outs. Having to fight to survive, having to become at all costs the strongest so as to not succumb.

And finally, how she had killed a boy in a row and all that had happened until the day Jag had brought her to the studios.

When the confession ended with an "And that's all", he sighed, pulled the keys out of the dashboard and got out, closing the car door behind him. "What a fuckingly complicated story," he thought as he lit a cigarette.

A short while later, the car approached the studios parking lot. Nef got out first and went to open the girl's door, who kept looking down, without the slightest desire to move. "Come on," he encouraged her.

She put a foot to the ground and laboriously climbed out of the car. The next few minutes passed in silence with her advancing on her skates and him following her, until they reached the door of the girl's room. "Now go take a shower, you'll feel better after."

"Stay here." He was taken by surprise. As a matter of fact, he also had a damned need to clean up from that day, but he accepted.

The girl's room looked orderly to his eyes, except for the improvised kitchen where, due to the lack of space, things were piled up. He sat down on the bed as she loosened the straps of her skates and pulled them off. She kept undressing in front of him, pulled off her pants that she dropped to the ground and then the sweatshirt under which she had a sweater and another pair of long-sleeved shirts. As she took off her garments her figure got leaner. The man again stared at the scar on her thin leg; this time, however, he felt the pain which was sewn into it.

The girl was just wearing her underwear and undershirt and approached him, putting her hands on his shoulders and pushing him to lie on the bed as she climbed on top of him with her legs astride. Unexpectedly she jumped over him and curled to his side, placing her head on his chest. She did nothing else.

Nef found himself in that uncomfortable and incomprehensible turn of events without knowing what to do. Generally after having sex he didn't allow anyone to stay with him, "To avoid getting involved," he had repeatedly explained to his friends when he talked about his affairs. "You let a woman into your bed, and before long she'll be getting ideas about the future - marriage, kids - and by morning? Too late. You're fucked!" he repeated, trying to make the more romantic Ted understand the concept. Anyhow, after every night spent having a good time, it was his custom to either send the girl away, or else he'd leave.

But in this case it was slightly different, first of all, they had done nothing, and then there was everything else...

He decided that it would have been better to wait for her to fall asleep, so he looked at her. Her hair was different from the night they had spent together. It scattered disorderly on the cushion, rough and sticky by the wax she used to 'fix' the strange hairstyle. She had hidden her face in the corner between his arm and his chest, probably to prevent him from seeing her expression while she held his shirt, holding her legs in a foetal position; only her long, white scar stood out. Even whiter than her light skin. Nef sighed, surrendering to that unexpected situation, hoping that no one would ever find out in the corridors of the studios.

The drawing of Nef and Fade in the car is by debtti