Okay, so I screamed. Screamed louder than I ever have in my life. I've been placed in so many different traumatizing situations. Being dragged out to the back of an alleyway to be gutted being high up there on the list. But this? Being dragged out from underneath a car, by a people who were known to torture and kill children, with no chance of escaping. I was way out of Port's jurisdiction. There wouldn't be any masked saviors hiding in dark alleyways. So I hit my head again as the man yanked me out from beneath the car, trying to squirm and fight and make everything difficult. He released my feet the moment I was completely out in the open, and I used this brief opening to pull them beneath myself, using Jaxon's bumper to haul myself up.

But there were two others waiting, and one of them tackled me by the waist. I went straight back to the ground, and pain that I had almost forgotten about flared back up my arm. I gritted my teeth, choking on adrenaline and straight up terror.

Think, think, think. I adjusted myself the best I could and rammed my elbow against the guy's face. Someone else came up above me to try grabbing me beneath the armpits. I responded by kicking the first guy away from me, pushing back my legs so that I could plant my feet on the ground, and used the second guy's momentum to throw my body upwards. The result ended with the back of my head colliding with what felt like the guy's chin.

Dots flooded my vision, and I stumbled forward. I felt someone grab my arms and yank me back, and the next thing I knew I was being held up against the side of one of the vans with two dofuses pinning me at each side, both hands securing each arm with a foot planted against mine. I was still trying to shake the forced dizziness from my head when a fist was thrown into my gut.

"Oof," I gasped, strained and gasping for breath. Fire burned my insides, and it was only the skills I received from years of fighting that kept me from breaking down and crying on the spot. Even when someone gripped my throat and forced me back into an upright position.

He's not much older than me, was the first thought of clarity I had when he shoved his face only inches from mine, his hand still wrapped around my throat. The only one that wasn't wearing a seriously freaky mask. He had a terrible, jagged scar just underneath his left eye that hooked over the bridge of his nose . . . I squinted my eyes, examining the rest of his face. Dark eyes, dark hair. A bit more stubble lining his cheeks than when I last saw him, but there was no mistaking that scar.

He was there when Ven broke into my apartment. There when I had challenged Ven to a fight, too. He wasted no time on familiarities, though.

"Where is Knov, Hale?" he demanded, curling his lip and tightening his hold around my throat.

I was really getting tired of people trying to choke me.

"I don't know," I managed, my words airy. He sneered and gave me another good swing to the gut. Again, I coughed and my knees buckled beneath me, but he kept me upright by my neck.

"Where is he?"

Another fucking punch before I could respond, and this time he did release my neck. I was gasping and coughing and - oh, here came the tears. I wanted to cradle my poor belly. Taking three swings from a fully grown man, it turned out, was not fun. Weak from pain, I couldn't manage to do much when he shoved his face back into mine.

"Where is he?"

"You . . . betrayed him," I wheezed. "You . . . turned in . . . Ven."

Scar Man stared at me for a moment, and I thought he was going to sock me again. Nope, he just flipped out a pocket knife, leaned forward, and pressed it against the side of my face.

"You can join him, if you like," he suggested. "Just keep being difficult, and I'll take you straight to him. He could use the company."

I stared at him, at that face with the nasty scar. I wondered if he and Ven were close. Damn, Ven must have known there were people around him that were waiting to betray him. He had been under the same amount of pressure as me, if not more. And yet he risked it all by reaching out to me. To help me, because he made a promise to some teenage boy that he would try to get what I was starting to think to be more than just a crush out of the fire. I had some power to help him. And I had turned him down.

What a way to feel like a complete ass.

"Why?" I asked, my breath a raspy wheeze in the back of my throat. The man shrugged and stared back at me with those emotionless eyes of his. He brushed his thumb against my cheek, slightly angling his blade up towards my eye.

"Because people like you shouldn't exist," he said simply. I scoffed out a miserable laugh.

"People like me," I repeated. He met my gaze. This guy wasn't joking, that's for sure.

"I pity you," he finally said, and I almost choked. "You have no idea, but it's obvious where you come from. So fucking obvious," his tone went angry at this, and he dug his blade a little bit harder against my skin. I stiffened. If he moved that blade any higher, it was going to touch my eye. "that you shouldn't be here."

Loon. This guy was a loon. Yet I couldn't help but think of Frenice, and everything that had happened since I'd met him. That ridiculous thing with the living hair. Frenice suggesting that I was something else but was more vulnerable than a simple human. I wanted to ask this man to elaborate, but I was afraid that if I asked, he would stick that knife into a very sensitive place on my face. Still, he must have seen the question in my eyes.

Thankfully, I didn't have to worry about losing an eye just yet. He reached forward with his free hand to yank on my hair.

"The hair," he snarled. "The eyes. Your responses to their poisons."

I felt my eyes widen at this. What was it that Frenice had called it?

"Y - you-"

"Odnare's Kiss. Should have left you on your knees begging to be put out of your misery." He grabbed my chin and all but spat in my face. "But no-o, that stupid half-giant of yours came to the rescue. Where did he take you, anyway?" he asked, almost as an afterthought. Then he shook his head before I could snap something at him. Holy shit, was he talking about Frenice? "But nevermind that. Where is Knov, girl? Where did he run off to?"

"What does he have to do with any of this?" I asked in turn. Instead of hitting me, like I'd expected, Scar Man merely grinned.

"He's the reason the game is still running. We would like to meet the boy that cost me a decent man."

The camera dude, or Ven?

I paused, trying to think. I couldn't hear any sirens over the distance just yet . . . Man, why did I even try? Why would help come now, when it hadn't any other time? When a gun was pointed to my head at twelve years old, and Hadi was forced into a contract to pay for my freedom. When I was dragged out of the apartment while Hadi was at work and explained that if I didn't fight, then my home was fair game to everyone else. To this day, I never told Hadi that specific detail. That I had been coloring with cheap crayons when a group of teenagers barged in, hauled me over their shoulders, and set me down in the dying courtyard full of other kids ranging in all ages from ten to twenty-five. They'd try to match us evenly in age. Told me I only needed to win against three of the odd thirty-something kids already there.

They took pity on me that one year, as I obviously had no idea what the hell was going on. Everyone was given a freebie the first time.

I gazed at this man who held me at a knife's edge, and I wondered what kind of hell he had seen, to target kids who were different from a place that was already hell enough. I scoffed and lowered my eyes, hating the tears that surfaced there.

"Are you after my mother or not?" I finally managed. "Because she's dead, okay?"

"Girl, I just want to know where Knov is."

"I don't know," I said quickly, and my voice cracked. Sobbing like a freaking baby, I was. A complete one-eighty from how I'd been at the rest-station, when Ven had supposedly snatched a flashdrive that had been hidden there. But different situations needed different solutions, and this time, I didn't need to do much acting on my part. "I don't know where he is. He doesn't trust me."

Let him see that I was breaking. Anything to buy myself some time. Resisting would only result in a beating, and make them quicker to act.

Scar Man wasn't taking it, though. He raised his eyebrows.

"So he left you here, alone, knowing that you're being targeted?"

I raised my chin.

"I can take care of myself," I snapped as snot dribbled past my lips. Scar Man tilted his head, and I didn't need to be a genius to read his expression.

Yeah, right.

He wasn't going to let me go. I knew that much. Either this evening was going to end with him shoving me in that van or with a bullet to the head in the middle of the parking lot. Either way, I couldn't decide which outcome was worse. Me being in that van would mean I was more than likely going to be prepped and tortured like that poor boy from the leaked video. So I needed to fight, but first, I needed to get myself a little bit of time.

They wanted Jaxon? Fine.

I took in a shaking breath.

"He walked up to the street," I finally replied. "But I think he's been meeting people in the woods, so I . . . he could have double-tracked back out there," I gestured to the trees. Be compliant. Just enough to not piss him off too much and still be believable.

Heh, so it could have worked in a different universe, for someone with far less shitty luck than me.

Scar Man studied me for a few moments more, then nodded once and stepped back.

"Fine," he said simply. "Then I see no problem why we can't leave him a message. Like sister, like brother, eh?" He gestured to the two guys holding me before continuing. "Now, there was a girl that was trouble. I should have known it was a Knov that nearly ruined us for the second time in the past ten years. Did he tell you about Older Sis? Wanna know how she died?"

"Not really," I squeaked, my voice hitching in my throat. Never a good sign when people like him start spilling out information like this. They were going to-

The two men shoved me forward, and I said good-bye to any and all composure to ever exist. Nonetheless, all my struggling and squirming did was piss off the two men, and they knocked my feet from beneath me as they forced me out in the open parking lot. A desperate stream of curses filtered through my lips. Someone opened the back of one of the vans, but they weren't taking me to it. Instead, another masked man (this one was wearing a pastel-blue frog) stumbled out with a camera.

Scar Man stood off to the side and gestured for the camera guy to come forward.

Frog Face held out a thumbs-up, and Scar Man took a few steps back to get out of the way.

Heart pounding, I stared at that blasted camera.

Got a date with the giants, dear!

If Jaxon had been telling the truth, this was a different camera man. But that didn't make any of this any better. I tore my gaze away from the camera to look at Scar Man. He reminded me of an evil Jaxon, with how stoic and indifferent he was.

"She died in much the same way Mr. Knov saw our late Recorder face. I think it would only be fitting if you met the same end, yes?"

"They put a bullet through both of his fucking knees and literally carved out his eyes in the middle of some back-end alley . . ."

Frenice had said that there were different sides to all of this. I was beginning to think this group wasn't concerned about my mother.

Scar Man gestured to someone behind me. I strained to look over my shoulder to see another figure wearing a dark green horse-like mask walking up to me, holding a pistol in one hand.

"No," I said beneath my breath. "Oh, no, no, no." The tears were back in session. The two henchmen holding onto my arms secured their hold, and before I could figure out a way to fight back, they forced me on my stomach before straightening me out on my knees. The movement was so controlled, so deliberate, that I wondered how many times they went through with procedures like this. Certainly enough times for my struggling attempts to unfaze them.

And then I heard it. So far in the distance that I almost cried harder from the sliver of hope blooming in my chest.

Sirens.

But this didn't concern them. They probably thought that those sirens were directed for someone else.

"I think we'll leave after this, boys," Scar Man said absently. "He'll come running here after he discovers Jator."

The sirens were getting closer. I fought for breath through the panic rising in my chest. In my mind's eye, I could imagine the gunman pointing at the back of my knees, ready to pull back the hammer - just waiting on Scar Man's signal.

"You know where he is?" I managed, trying to stall for time. Scar Man met my look.

"Just wanted to see how useful you are, is all." He looked up over my head, opened his mouth-

The sirens turned on this street.

Scar Man glanced back at me.

"Who did you call?" he asked calmly, but - oh, the rage was definitely there. I smiled through tears and snot.

"They're really coming," I laughed, and I looked up at the sky, covered in stars and clouds. "Oh, they really came."