Dear train drivers. Listen, I know you have a very stressful job, especially if you're on the night shift, after all, I do know the pain of an all-nighter. However, even if you're completely silent through the rest of the day and are happy to trundle along your tracks without a care in the world just know this. If you feel whatever strange, sadistic human need to blare your horn at full blast while roaring through a station when it's still dark, I think there's a special circle of hell reserved just for you.

I was already composing the various torture methods in my head the moment the long, toneless honk finally cut out as the two carriage passenger train sped out of the station and wound its way into the nearby hills. I stretched and yawned, the crick in my neck snapping with an audible pop. All in all, not the worst night's sleep of my life.

"What time is it?" I asked failing to stifle another yawn.

Shadow stirred in the passenger seat, uncurled his long legs into the footwell and glanced, bleary-eyed at the clock in the dashboard. "Oh-five-thirty-two," he replied.

I didn't need to ask what that was in English, all I needed to hear was that even in the height of summer the morning sun had yet to creep over the horizon. Ugh, it's too early for this. I looked over my shoulder to the back seats. The Land Rover, while not being particularly spacious or luxurious, was warm and dry and at the end of the day was better than the cold floor. Shadow and I had taken the front seats while Sheira, the only one of us who was small enough to comfortably fit, was still curled up with the threadbare blanket tossed over her. She too had just woken up and was rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Morning!" I said cheerfully.

"Get lost," came the reply.

Fair enough, I thought as I opened the door and spilt out into the rather cold highland air. Even with my internal combustion engine, there were goosebumps rising on my skin and puffs of steam shot from my mouth and nose. There were a few other people milling around the train station, men and women in business suits, students with bulging backpacks, families with dozing kids in one arm and an enormous suitcase in the other, all of whom seemed slightly alarmed as Shadow popped open his door too and Sheira's head drifted into view.

God knows what they thought we'd all been up too and while the temptation of saying something like, 'Well that was fun, you guys were great,' was almost impossible to resist, the last thing we needed today was to draw attention to ourselves. We were getting closer to the city and Molly could have easily stationed spy's anywhere so it went without saying that we needed a low profile.

Perhaps another reason for their wrinkled noses was the fact that I hadn't had a bath in about a week, Sheira hadn't either, and as for Shadow? God knows. I held my hand up to my face, breathed on it, sniffed and grimaced. My dentist was going to have a field day when I next saw him.

"You know what I need?" I announced to whoever was paying attention.

"What?" Sheira groggily replied.

"Toothpaste, deodorant and clean clothes," I listed. I had become very much acclimatised to my own smell, the population of Edinburgh could probably do without me honking up their great city.

Sheira snorted from the car in agreement but Shadow didn't make a sound. Instead, he stood up, snapped his fingers, generating clouds of black smoke, and waved something under my nose.

"I can assist with two of those issues," he said as I squirted a large slug of spearmint toothpaste onto a brush and scrubbed at my teeth with a vicious ferocity never seen before by yours truly. Sheira followed suit and was soon followed by Shadow.

"Can you transfer any item like that?" I asked curiously after I spat into a drain.

He shrugged. "Only small ones and I have to know where they are."

While my heart sadly sank at the thought of the mischief I wouldn't be able to get up to, the sensible one posed a very important question. "Do you at least leave cash?" Sheira said with her eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Sometimes. I just leave whatever coin falls into my hand. Anything from that pile is just pocket change."

Pocket change? Pocket change! There was enough money in the pile to feed my estate for five years! I mean there was probably enough to tear it down, build a new one and still have enough left over for a pool. He had an eternity to acquire wealth, perhaps I could convince him to 'lend' me some.

A stray thought wandered into my head. "Have you ever given someone a solid gold coin?"

He cast his mind around a bit. "I think I did leave a couple of drachma's at a Tesco in Filey once. Oh and there were some crowns at a bookshop in Aberdeen, I think that was me."

Suitably freshened and with a decent breakfast, once again courtesy of the glorified thief, we were back in the car and making headway to Edinburgh with a few notable changes. Number One, Shadow was now in the driving seat as while I was a very good driver I was technically only sixteen which is just a wee bit illegal, so I had been assigned the duty of navigator and Sheira was doubling up as backseat navigator and lookout. Not that anyone could actually see in as, change number two, Shadow had taken the time, in a stroke of genius, to black-out the windows with a veil of darkness. It made us look a little suspicious but at the end of the day it was legal so the police weren't going to bother us and potential prying eyes would be none the wiser.

This was a very good thing considering that we had been dealing with spies. There was someone back in London, who for all we knew was still relaying information back to Molly. It was because of them that up to us boarding Kardashian Train, Molly's goons had known our exact location because the Harpy and everyone else had. A cold chill of anxiety made my chest tighten painfully. In a few hours, the Harpy would know and the spy might too which meant that we might not be going in completely incognito. I told the other two this fact with a hammering heart.

"That information still has to be relayed," Shadow said firmly as we exited the carriageway. "It could take hours."

"But it'll take us hours to get there," Sheira pointed out.

Shadow didn't have an answer to that. I tried to wrack my brains for a possible candidate. No one immediately came springing, arms waving and carrying a giant sign that said, Sup I'm the spy!' but I didn't really know anyone, not really. But what if they were trying to get someone back? Do you have time to read a thirty-page list? I sighed and stored the thought, and the accompanying panic, carefully into the back of my mind. I could worry about that later when it returned to bite us spectacularly on the ass.

Three hours after our rather rude awakening the frail old Land Rover finally chugged into Edinburgh city centre. The city was surprisingly like York, or what little I'd seen of it, as everything was ridiculously old. In London, you'd be hard-pressed to find a building that was a hundred years old that hadn't been renovated and everything else was made of steel and cement, save for a small selection of truly ancient buildings that had been preserved for the sake of nostalgia and sucking money out of the taxpayer.

Everything looked like it had been carved from the same chunk of yellowish stone, a style that stretched from the rapidly filling shopping lanes to the enormous lead roofed buildings which had business people filling in and out of the revolving doors like ants from a nest. It wouldn't have looked out of place in a fantasy world or some grim Victorian drama as, according to Sheira, the entire city was pretty much built on dark, grim slums that were definitely haunted with the souls of various mad axe murderers.

I kept the vision in my mind as we filed through traffic, following Shadow's compass as it handily flashed instructions on its misty screen, and kept a cautious eye on anyone who may be paying too close attention. But then again it had only just gone nine and the likelihood of someone paying that close of attention to a rickety Land Rover was slim as people dashed around, not really taking in the world around them.

Good. There was an Elemental base just outside of the city, we could do good to avoid them for now.

Within the hour we had crested over the lip of the crater of the extinct volcano that Edinburgh sat it, which I have to admit is really cool, and were making our way into the highlands. The terrain turned nasty almost instantly with gently sloping hills veering up into towering mountains and sparse trees morphing into thick pine forests. But yet we drove on along a steadily degrading road.

Then, in a carpark in the middle of actual nowhere, the engine died. I hadn't noticed Shadow pull over and only asked what was going on when he was pulling the key out of the ignition but didn't have to ask what the plan was. Molly could know we're coming so staying under the radar would be the best option in keeping ourselves alive.

Luckily we were already travelling light so abandoning the car was done quickly but before we hiked off into the terrifying faces of rock I gave the faithful tank a pat and then hurried off to join the others. You know, for a born and bred city boy I was getting used to this hiking stuff, I could even see why some people (Madmen and nutters) enjoyed it. My comfortable, worn boots made scaling the hills easy and I hadn't got a blister in days so that was a definite improvement to my benefit and my travelling companions, who had been relieved of seeing me pop them.

After two long hours of crisscrossing across hiking trails, the valley opened up into a wide trough. The lone river lay dry and dusty in the summer heat, the grass was tinged with yellow and the sloping dirt hills crumbled underfoot but at the very tip of the mountains was a thin sheet of snow, a crown on the head of a stone giant. And in the distance, seemingly no bigger than a dollhouse from this distance sat a building that made my heart leap to my throat.

Shadow was hugging the wall tightly and gestured manically for us to join him. "Okay," he said once he was certain we were out of sight. "Okay, I don't think they can see us from here. Now we just need to get in. Luckily for us, I've been here before."

"About six hundred years ago I was trying my hand as a mercenary and was employed by the local villages. You see, Fergus Dunloch was, among other things, notorious for being a tight-fisted bastard who would raid the local villages for anything that was worth his time, and he didn't mind if his taxes were paid in human life either so yeah," he shrugged, "popular guy. Anyways, the locals asked me to get their stuff back, but by the time I got there an angry mob was tearing the place apart, that book you found summed it up perfectly, only it missed the part where they poured hot oil over the ones who ran."

I winced painfully. I knew what it was like to get on the bad side of a chip pan. I still had a scar on my foot from where the thing had landed on it. Funnily enough, if you caught it from the right angle it looked like a spider that had been beaten to death with a flyswatter.

"I got what I needed and left before the infighting started over the treasure and never went back but while I was making my way down the cliffside I saw a group of people seemingly appear from nowhere from near where we're standing right now."

At that news, I glanced quickly over the moss and grass coated hills. Nothing seemed out of place, it was the highlands, after all, it's not exactly like anything was noticeable.

"A secret passage?" Sheira asked, glancing around as well.

"The servants knew about but not the main family. The Dunloch's were as boringly human as you can get–"

"Besides the murder and torture of dozens of innocent people?" I absentmindedly said while rummaging through a pile of boringly normal rocks.

"Besides that. But it was just, as far as I'm aware, a normal escape route. Meaning that if they got out–"

"We can get in!" Sheira said vigorously.

"And I'm already looking so hurry it up."

I jumped down from the standard rocks and crept up towards a small ridge close to the cliff base. I was creeping to stay out of sight of the castle so the top of my head wasn't just bobbing along like a strangely shaped badger and I was to employ whatever history knowledge my sieve-brain had managed to retain while being shouted at by Miss Chamberlain for not being able to remember the difference between a motte and a bailey. (Guess which one means moat?)

Say you worked in a castle and needed a way out because your boss was a trained madman. Where would you put the exit to your secret passage? Now, if it was me I'd be doing my damn to stay out of eye-line, because, you know, I'd be quite attached to my head. The others had come to this conclusion as well but all I could see was grass and dirt. And some moss. And the occasional clump of dandelions that could be served up for a £100 salad in a snobby restaurant.

I stumbled up the slope with all the grace of a new-born giraffe as my feet kept slipping in the mud. There didn't seem to be any obvious dent in the hillside or any foliage that looked new, I even asked Sheira if she could see anything. It was negative from her and Shadow wasn't coming up with much either. It had to be somewhere, but where?

Sheira suggested that maybe the tunnel had caved in, or Molly had found the tunnel and blown it up, but Shadow countered that by saying she'd only been there for a few months and if Lord Dunloch hadn't known about there's a high chance she wouldn't either. Oh great, now they're arguing about structure degradation. Fun.

With my stomach pressed against the hill, I tried to scramble up it to get a better vantage point, lost my footing on the parched, crumbly earth and plummeted a good ten feet or so down and plop! Right into a foul-smelling puddle. I stood up, flicking green sludge off my jeans and boots, made the mistake of sniffing a drop that had landed on my fingers and retched. Something had died in there.

I scraped the congealed lump of brown goo off the skin and flicked it away onto the barren ground. Dry dirt that hadn't seen rain in a month and yet I wasn't just standing in a puddle, I was stood in a stream.

"MUD!" I yelled triumphantly. The other two stopped arguing and jumped like I'd cracked a whip.

"What?" She was looking at me like I'd grown a second head.

"Mud!" I repeated. "That means water!"

Neither looked particularly impressed at this stunning revelation. Penny in the air.

I slumped and rolled my eyes. "Where's it coming from?"

Penny drops. The two of them dashed up the hill behind me, following the trickling line to a clump of earth that seemed a bit spongier than the surrounding terrain. We dug. We dug with whatever our powers could lend us, a snowy shovel for Sheira and bands of black for Shadow. I scooped out dirt and worms with my bare hands, the beds of my fingernails caked painfully until I hit something hard and almost broke a finger.

While Sheira helpfully applied ice to the throbbing but thankfully undamaged digit, Shadow pulled the last layer away and I saw him grin that Cheshire cat smile. What I'd smacked into was the iron rim of a tunnel. A tunnel that melted into the dark beyond, the sunlight dying after a few feet of packed earth and stone. It was also only a few feet across, not a problem for Sheira's petite figure or my scrawniness but Shadow...Shadow.

"Can you fit in that?" I asked and immediately regretted due to the death stare that was fired my way. "That's not what I meant!" I said quickly, "it's just that you're not exactly small and your shoulders aren't the...in the...oh dear..."

Surprising everyone I lived to take another breath as Shadow proved that, yes he'd indeed fit but it was going to be very snug. There was also a strange smell emanating from somewhere. My best guess was that this thing had once been a waste tunnel of some description.

"How the hell do you keep finding these places?" Sheira asked.

I'd done something similar with the church at Anglesey and both occasions definitely fell into the 'I don't know why this keeps happening to me and each time is just a barely concealed fluke but let's just keep going because apparently, I'm lucky' category.

I shrugged, simply replied with, "I don't know how I does it, I just do," and climbed/was pushed into the tunnel.

Natural sunlight died six feet in, the only source of light being the gently pulsing Vulcan Star at my back in an attempt to keep Incaendium out of the way. Even with that, my eyes were struggling to make anything out, not that there was anything to see. It was just dark and cold and damp, water was dribbling down from somewhere and buckling ceilings made the small tunnel even more cramped. I will gladly put my hands up and say I don't have claustrophobia, but this was getting hairy even for me.

Directly behind me was Sheira, small enough to be on her hands and knees rather than her elbows like me, or like Shadow, army crawling on her stomach. I could hear the strain that Shadow was exerting in a desperate attempt to keep moving. If he stopped he'd be stuck, and when he did under a nightmarish narrow bit he had to use Sheira's outstretched leg to pull himself free.

One time, many years ago, I'd made the mistake of watching The Descent before a camping holiday. Ten years old being forcibly dragged down into the belly of a cave by my non-too impressed parents had not gone well for any of us, as visions pale hands reaching out from the cracks gave me an anxiety attack a thousand feet down which caused me to spectacularly pass out. This may have resulted in a similar situation if we weren't going up, thank god. Still, keeping my panicking brain under control required all of my efforts.

Perhaps that's why I crawled headlong into a wall.

"Ow! What the hell was– OUCH!"

"Why have you stopped? HEY!" Sheira yelped as Shadow didn't quite get the message that our convoy had come to a halt.

"Sorry," came a faint, sheepish voice. "What's going on?"

It had felt like miles since we'd first crawled into the tunnel. Miles upon miles of a dark, cramped, twisting tube that had been rising sharply for a few minutes so I really didn't fancy turning around. I ran a hand over they flat surface, squinting and straining my eyes in the dark.

"There's something there, but I can't see what it is."

Sheira made a very insulting noise. "You can't see? Are you an Elemental or not you moron!"

With my face burning and no doubt the same colour as Shadow's freaky eyes, I lit up a small flame with a snap. The slimy walls were instantly illuminated, the light reflecting off the moss and sludge-like a black mirror. The stone I'd run my face into was flat and definitely man-made. It was the same diameter of the tunnel and looked like it was made up of sandstone, like a paving slab. I gave it a light push.

"Seems to be an exit to me," I said as the slab rose by a millimetre. "I'm going to take a look, stand by and stay quiet."

It took my full weight behind me to push the paving slab up by the few centimetres that would allow me to peer out into the, after the extremely grim tunnel, hideously bright and very dusty room before me. Single sets of footprints crisscrossed the room, navigating between the piles of wooden crates that took up any non-essential space, in fact, it was like the walkway had been carved like a great road between towering wooden mountains.

It was definitely a storage room of some description but the obvious question followed as such. What the hell were they keeping in here?

"Nick!" Sheira hissed. "Where are we?"

"Hurry up I'm getting cramp down here!"

"Oh stop whining! Now let's see, it's some sort of storage room. There are piles of crates, there's straw everywhere and they definitely need to get the cleaners in, this place is filthy!"

"We'll hire a maid later," Shadow snapped, "see anything else?"

"Hm..." I glanced upwards. "That's not dust, that's ash. We're in a fire pit. It's the kitchen. Funny, I thought it would be bigger."

"This is just a servant one then. The main one was ridiculously expensive to run so they'd use a smaller one for day to day usage and for the servants. Good, that means we're about as far away from the main castle as we can get."

"Where were you for my exams?"

Before he could reply with some snappy comment a gut-wrenching sound came echoing down the corridor. Footsteps, three sets and they were all coming this way. "Get down, someone's coming!" I frantically whispered down. Sheira must have crashed into Shadow on the way down in her attempt to get out of the way. I slid back a few inches but left the stone open by a crack so I could hear the ensuing conversation as the door slammed against the wall and feet descended the stone steps.

I held my breath.

"How many do you reckon they'll need today?" a rough male voice called out that sounded like he'd chain-smoked for the last twenty years, drifted through the crack in the floor.

Another male voice that was decidedly more distant replied, "dunno, they got through three yesterday."

The third person, a female who was either incredibly asthmatic or just plain wheezy, interjected, "well one of those was one of the two hundred cases and that's still half full."

The person who was probably stood on the stairs grunted, "whatever you two think, let's just get out of here, this place is freezing."

"Would you rather be cold or have these explode?" the wheezy woman said.

The rough voice spoke up now, "let's just get two, I can't see the boss needing much more."

There was the sound of wood being shifted as crates were moved and passed up with much grunting coming from the three individuals.

"I can't wait to get out of here. I don't understand how it can be thirty degrees outside and only five in here. It's bloody miserable."

"Two hundred quid to say that to the boss's face." The rough voice jeered.

The other guy laughed, "I'd rather not. I've heard Marx has a backlog of dodgy formula, punishments only."

I could almost see them shuddering as they all sucked in a sharp breath. They were now lifting the crates out of the room, they weren't rushing this, they were taking their time. Whatever was in those crates was evidently volatile. At the last moment, the female hurried back down and picked up another crate. "A small one just in case," she explained, "don't need to run out now."

And then the door slammed shut once again and footsteps receded down the corridor until they vanished completely. I waited another minute or so afterwards just to see if they were going to change their mind and come back for a fourth. But they didn't. I took this as an all-clear and with an almighty shove pushed the slab clean away. Then it was just a matter of trying to haul Shadow out of the tunnel.

"Never again," he muttered and dusted the gunk off his clothes.

Now at a better angle, the room was about the size of my flats living room/kitchen but the available space was less than my midget of a bedroom. And the dust? The dust! Let's just say it would kill anyone with OCD. On the boxes at the very back, which had gone undisturbed since the medieval era, the stuff was at least an inch thick and made my nose itch up a storm.

I turned around and was greeted by the sight of Sheira brandishing a hammer.

"Hey, I know I'm annoying but that's a bit extreme," I gingerly took a step back.

She chose to ignore that. "Lest see what they're hiding down here," she said as she started pulling the nails from the nearest box.

The lid lifted away to reveal the contents inside. Row after row of glass test tubes, each filled with an almost colourless...something. It wasn't a liquid, but it wasn't slime either. It slid stickily within its confines, a shimmering trail etched behind it. At least a hundred of the things were packed tightly between the straw, like sleeping soldiers.

I picked one up and uncorked it. There was no odour and since nothing bad could happen to the immortal Shadow tipped a small portion onto his palm. A minute went by without anything starting to burn or corrode so it wasn't harmful per se but left the next obvious question. What did it do and why did Molly need so much? Another five lids were removed only to show the same contents so what made it so important?

"We should take some with us," Sheira suggested. "It might come in useful."

We each took one vial, I stored mine carefully in my inner pocket along with a clump of straw, and slowly, trying not to make the slightest sound, crept towards the door. It wasn't locked (Why would it be?) and the moment Shadow gave the all-clear after sweeping the room with his darkvision we stepped out into another kitchen and then into the corridors of the castle itself.

The three workers had been right, it was freezing in here! Even I felt goosebumps prickling against my skin and puffs of steam shot from my mouth. The hottest summer on record and yet the climate wouldn't have been out of place in the Arctic. In my vision of the place, there had been snow and sure enough, the moment we crept past a window the sky outside was in the centre of a vicious blizzard.

How were they doing that? Why were they doing that? I get the need for refrigeration but changing the weather is a bit extreme. But they did it anyway because they could. I suddenly felt quite powerless in the face of something so formidable. I was a lighter in front of an inferno but maybe that wasn't a bad thing. After all, my dad once famously said that one word can bring down an empire, maybe that's all we needed. Maybe.

The wind howled viciously outside the rattling windows but yet there wasn't a sound to be heard. Well, nothing human at least. The Forgers Guild and the chemical plant were all overflowing with people and chatter and chaos but here? You could have marched an army through the corridors with no one seeing. Where was everyone?

At a dead intersection, I expressed my thoughts. "You'd expect this place to be overflowing with people!" I pointed out. "You don't suppose they've all gone on a tea break do you?"

"I think we're still in the sub levels. Storage. Has to be," Sheira replied like she was trying to reason with her own doubts.

"So let's find a way up. Come on, the staircase was in this direction if my memory proves correct," Shadow walked casually inland like he was a bored tourist and not breaking and entering into a highly hostile zone where everyone wanted to kill us.

Six hundred years ago or not the OAP lead us easily to a spiralling stone staircase that twisted upwards and down into the dark. In my mind down meant dungeon, and dungeon meant prisoners. But would Molly keep them down there? She was undoubtedly a psychopath and psychopaths have ego's the size of you average country so would she keep her prize with what she viewed as scum?

Only one way to find out. Oh god, I can't believe I think that this is a good idea.

I was kind of hoping the others would call it a stupid idea but they went along with my madness and followed me down into the bowels of hell. I don't understand how it could get any colder but dear god it did. The ice elemental felt it. The woman who has ice pulsing through her blood said it was freezing. God help the rest of us!

The stairs petered out into a chamber that looked like it had been pulled straight out of the set of Game of Thrones. The walls were shining with condensation, rust coated the bars of each cell like a rash on the skin. Old fashioned flaming torches were sunk into wall brackets and flickered weakly in the pitch black. The all too similar reek of mould and mildew invaded my nostrils and triggered a subconscious wince.

But there was something else. Something sweet and pungent and foul and it clung to each cell like a blanket. Then we peered into the dank stone boxes and realised what it was. It was the decay of human beings. Each cell had a rotting corpse, emaciated and infested with maggots curled into a pile of tightened bone on the cold floor.

The first one I saw I couldn't help but give out a cry of shock and horror. I'd seen zombies, I'd seen dead bodies but these had just been left here, discarded as waste stock and nothing more. Sheira grabbed my hand and quickly whispered, "It's not them", and I saw what she meant. These people had been here for months, maybe even longer, and their decay meant they weren't recent. Yes, I'd seen a dose of bad formula melt someone but these people had starved to death.

At least that's what I thought because then Shadow sent something that made me feel like a bucket of ice-cold water had been dumped over me. "I've got a live one."

He was standing at the cell second from the end on the right and I sprinted to get there, in fact, I almost slipped on a moisture patch to get there and then felt something similar to relief. It was a man. On his own, no one else to be seen. His dark skin clung tightly to his bones, his eyes sunk deep into his skull-face. Black hair fell limp, greasy and unkempt and his, once actually quite expensive, clothes were nothing but dirty rags. A warthog, smoke and embers drifting weakly from its fur, hugged his side protectively. He didn't react to Shadows torch beam. It was like he was already dead.

Then Sheira gasped. "Daryl?"

Daryl? The missing guy from Fire! Annie's brother, the cabin leader who vanished in January, he was alive! Just.

He raised his head to look at us, it took a painful amount of effort to do so and I took a moment for recognition to flash across his eyes. "Sheira? Is that really you?"

She grabbed the bars and nodded vigorously. "Yes, it's me, you're alive!" She was downright joyful to see a familiar face that wasn't decaying.

He scoffed. "I wouldn't call this alive, this...this is purgatory." Every breath took effort, every syllable required full concentration. He was right, he was dying, slowly but surely but definitely dying. "Who are friends?"

"This is Shadow and this is Nick, he's a newbie in Fire."

That news triggered a weak smile. With his skeletal features, he looked like a Halloween pumpkin. "Really? Well, how'd you find it? Still crazy?"

"Sophie's mental, Chip's like a live wire and Leela's like a firecracker."

"That's good. That's very good."

"Your sister hates my guts," the image of Annie's fury filled face lodging itself firmly to the front of my mind. "She thinks the others are trying to replace you."

His smile dropped. "Oh Annie..." he rattled out a sigh. "We don't have parents, they died in a car wreck about four years ago. She never got over it, not really. I think that's why here powers came in so early, they arrive when you need them, but it only made things worse." He paused and took a few more deep breaths and then continued. "She thinks nothing can hurt her. She...she thinks can do what she wants without any consequences. I don't want to know what she's done in these last six months."

"She'd do anything to get you back, that's not a bad thing," Sheira reassured him.

"It might be..." he coughing fit suddenly wracked his skeletal form. His breath rattled like a dementor and globules of blood flew from his mouth and spattered the stone slabs. After a few seconds, it subsided. "Anyway, I don't want her to see me like this."

With that, he tilted his head and I had to muffle a shout of alarm. His veins were black and patches of flesh looked like they were slowly decaying from the inside out. It was like what I'd seen with Juliet only much, much slower.

"How long have you been like that?" Shadow asked.

"Six months," he said simply. "A test batch didn't work so now they're waiting to see how long I'll last. Every cell in my body is dying, burning up one by one. I've done better than they thought I would but all I want is to go to sleep and never wake up." He closed his eyes and whispered, "it's all I can think about..." He sat up a little straighter, "but tell me this...what are you doing in this godforsaken place? What's worth dying for?"

"My family. She took my mum. My little brother and sister too. I'm going to get them back," a determined voice momentarily replaced my own.

He chuckled weakly. "What we do...for the people...we... we love, eh?"

"Tell me about it."

Daryl leaned back against the wall and ran a hand absentmindedly through the warthog's fur. "I don't hear much down here but I've heard things whenever they remember to bring me scraps. They're keeping something in the north tower, something that the freak thinks is valuable...very valuable...and alive. I don't know anything else...but maybe that's all you need."

He had no idea how important that was. No idea at all how much it meant to me.

"Thank you," I said quietly. "Is we can do for you? We've got food. We can get you out, we can– "

He raised a hand to stop me talking and shook his head. He was smiling, it wasn't happy but it was, strangely, peaceful. "If you get the chance, as you're for the door burn this place to the ground. No, don't argue, please." A shimmering tear fell down his cheek. "This isn't life, its sickness, its torture. My own fire is too weak and it couldn't hurt me even if I wanted it too...it's my curse to die like this...anything is better than this. Anyway," he smiled again, "I'd get to see mum and dad again. So that's it, my last request. Take care of yourselves, do what you need to do, run like hell and burn this place to ash. It's what it deserves...it needs to die."

"Daryl..." Sheira was crying too.

"Goodbye Sheira. It was nice to meet you too Shadow, and Nick?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell the others I said hi?"

What a strange but oddly appropriate moment to laugh even, even if it was brief and fleeting. "You got it dude."

If we get out of this alive I will.