The air blowing in from the open window of the car was cool for mid-afternoon. It pushed against my hijab from the right, ballooning it to the left and pulling tendrils of hair out from under it. They lashed around my face like tiny whips, reaching across my forehead and into my eyes. I let them.

Sighing, I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes.

"We will be there in another hour," Christopher said from my side. I opened 'the windows to my soul' a crack to look at the deserted road, as if endeavouring to confirm this fact for myself by looking at the non-existent foliage by the side of the road. The engine was a steady drone around me, the rocking of the car as gentle as a cradle, lulling me traitorously to the delicious edge of sleep.

"Why did you have to take him so far away?" I complained offhandedly, settling back and squirming left and right, trying to burrow into the leather seat. The silence during the first half hour of the ride had built and built around us like a brick wall, and I took some pleasure in hacking at it with an axe.

Christopher chuckled. I looked to the side to see the first almost-genuine, smile on his face for what felt like centuries, though it had only been one long and destructive day. I wished it had been centuries. At least I would have had time to get used to it; though I had to wonder if I could have survived that long.

"We need information from him," he explained, hands tapping a silent beat on the steering wheel. I watched the pale digits go up and come down, almost hypnotic in their regularity. "He might not have known squat about Frank, but it is safe to assume he would know something that might help."

"And you couldn't do this interrogation nearer to civilisation why?" I twisted my head to the side, against the annoying, un-wielding headrest, and pressed a cheek to the cool leather, looking at him through the screen of misplaced hijab over my eyes. I pushed it away restlessly.

Christopher chuckled again. Apparently, he couldn't get enough of the smiles. He spared me a little glance before returning his eyes to the road. "Zara, how many of the things that Alexander does are legal, do you thing?"

I sighed. "But you are the one conducting this, not him," I pointed out. "He's still in the hospital high on drugs."

He shrugged. "That's true, but this once we need the authorities to not know about what we are doing. This once," he said, "they actually will interrupt with the proceeding. If we go through with this through the legal channels, we could be here till kingdom come. So...well, we can get what we want from him and drop him off with the police anytime we want."

I raised my eyebrows, though he couldn't see, intent as he was on the road. "And no one is going to miss him?"

His silence, and the knowing grin on his face, was answer enough.

"Hmm," I acknowledged. "Right." Silence reined for some more time, during which the wind succeeded in pushing more hair around my face. The drone of the car engine subsided into a deceptively gentler pitch, almost truly putting me to sleep.

I blinked several times and sat up straighter. "What do you think he might tell you?" I asked.

Christopher shrugged. "Anything. You see," he added. "It's not just the big pieces of information that are going to make this operation work. If we are to go after Frank's network outright, we need every bit of data we can gather. And if Bosley has it," he said simply, "we take Bosley."

"Yeah, right," I said. Made sense to me. Though of course, if he had said that they would have to stretch him on a rack and put him in the iron lady, to gain said information, I won't have raised an eyebrow. I had no moral compass as far as these people were concerned. Still, come to think of it... "How do you plan to get this information anyways?"

Christopher was silent for a long time. Then, "It's best if we don't have this particular discussion."

"Why?" I asked. "Afraid I might run away screaming?"

He laughed outright at this, shaking his head from side to side in explicit negation. "I don't think you run away screaming from anything, Zara, even the things you should run from."

"Then why?"

"Well, does it matter?" he asked, shrugging his right shoulder.

I looked at him closely, watching for cracks in his façade, but came up with nothing. His face was as clear as a desert sky, his eyes wide open as they looked at the empty road. Then I thought about it. Did it really matter what these people did to Fred? Did I want to be the good guy and see that he wasn't maltreated? Wasn't that what all the good guys in all the books and movies did? Stand up for everyone, good or bad? Be the actual hero?

I thought back to the year I had spent in California, about the screams I had heard at night, of protests for mercy and dead honour...and I thought about the croaked nose on one young woman dead in her grave.

Yes, I could stand being no hero.

I settled back down again. "No, I guess it does not. But,"-I put the nail of my left forefinger under that of my right thumb, and watched its silhouette through the white half-moon-"if you torture him-against which I have absolutely no objection-won't he rat you out when you release him?"

Chris snorted in response. "Bosley might not be able to boast about having even a sliver of a brain, but even he knows who to speak against. No matter where he is,"-there was no hint of a smile on his face now-"he knows who holds the reins to his filthy miserable life. He will keep his mouth shut."

I felt a shiver run through me at the blatant truth, delivered in so matter-of-fact a manner, but it was quick to subside. A slight smile played across my lips at the thoughts of the fat maggot living the rest of his days looking over his shoulder for shadows intent on stopping his heartbeats-if he in fact got out of prison anytime soon, which, if I had anything to do with it, he wouldn't.

We travelled for a moment more in silence, but the weight of the sentence he had passed over Fred's head still remained, like a train of thought left unspoken. I looked at Christopher Rodwell in a new light-quite literally in fact, as he was silhouetted in profile against the sun-and smiled broadly. "You are not very different from him, are you?" I asked comfortably.

"What?" The question seemed to have startled him out of deep thought, for his fingers tightened instinctively on the steering wheel as he turned to regard me with raised eyebrows. "Who?"

"Alexander," I said. As his forehead furrowed in mild confusion, I continued, "You two are not very different, no matter your efforts to play at yin and yang. You are just the same as him, deep inside."

Chris was silent for a moment as he considered this. Then, "Okay," he said, raising a hand and showing me the palm in supplication. "Call me daft, where did that come from? Playing at yin and yang?"

"Oh, you know," I shrugged. "The two of you always try to portray a picture. He comes off as the black-clad, dishonest bad guy who gets what he wants through whatever means, and you as the scrupulous good guy who everyone likes and who walks the narrow path of righteousness no matter what. But," I finished, holding up a finger, "the two of you are just the same."

The furrows on his brow had deepened considerably through my half-assed explanations. "I still don't get what you are talking about."

I took a deep breath. Honest to goodness, even I was at a loss as to what I was driving at. What was I trying to establish? That the two brothers were just the same deep down? In what way? "The two of you are scared," I declared.

Christopher's hand slipped on the wheel. The car took a wild turn to the left, tires screeching life and death on the grey tracks, before whining to a loud stop on the side.

A deafening silence filled the vehicle. I had been thrown asunder with the force of the swirling car and took a moment to unstick myself from the passenger door. My head had banged quite painfully against the side of the open window (Children, always wear your seatbelts). I unwrapped my fingers from around the dashboard, where they had unconsciously latched on as the car spun like a top, and placed one hand to the side of my throbbing forehead.

"What in the name of God are you doing?" I yelled in outrage, pulling at my blown-to-hell scarf. I turned to look at him.

He was sitting quite still in his seat, his fingers draped over the brown steering-wheel in a death grip, his eyes staring ahead as if he had forgotten my presence-or the fact that he had almost killed the two of us. As my words soaked into the dead-silence of post almost-accident, he twisted his head around slowly to look at me. His eyes were a little too wide. "Scared?" he asked. His voice sounded curiously wide too, if voices could be distinguished that way.

"What?" I asked. The sun was glaring into my eyes and I had to squint to see him clearly.

"Why would you think we would be scared?" He was still looking at me askance, slightly in a daze. He shook his head a little, as if to clear his thoughts. "You said we were scared..."

Again, what? It took a moment for me to filter the previous conversation out of my jumbled thoughts. "Sca...Oh, that. You didn't have to kill me if you didn't like what I said," I pointed out. My bandaged right wrist was a white ghost in the periphery of my vision as I rubbed at my head.

He screwed his eyes shut in frustrated and let out a long breath.

I sighed too. "Alright," I said. "I just meant, I think the two of you are trying to put on some kind of a strong façade, to come across as indestructible and invulnerable. You went about it in different ways, sure, thus sparking the yin and yang comment, but deep down,"-I gesticulated wildly to emphasis my point, feeling a little silly now-"you are scared that someone else might see that you are scared."

He was looking at me like I had grown two heads-and a toe over each head to boot. "What in living hell are you talking about?" He seemed to have gotten over his earlier bewilderment, and was regarding me like he might an old hobo urinating by the side of the road. "Are you a psychiatrist now? Why would we be hiding that we are scared? Why would we be scared in the first place?" He scoffed.

I narrowed my eyes a little at his condescending tone. I might feel a little out of depth with this conversation myself, but that didn't mean I was shooting blindly into the air. I had to fight to keep my voice soft, reminding myself this was sensitive territory I ventured into. "You are both adopted. Yo-"

"What does that have to do with anything?" he interrupted harshly.

I almost smiled in satisfaction, and again had to fight to school my features. I was right. "You are both adopted," I said firmly. "You both lost your parents when very young. All your life, you have probably been in a constant fight to prove yourself to the people you did raise you, who did become your parents, and to each other. Frank and your sister went out of the equation a long time ago. It's just the two of you now. It-"

"I haven't been fighting to prove anything to anybody," he said again. His hands were on the wheel still, and the knuckles were gradually turning white. "The people who raised me are my family. I don't need to make myself anything for them."

"But they are not your parents," I said again. I was starting to regret getting into this discussion. He wasn't looking at me anymore, instead staring out the windshield like his life depended on it. "Don't you think at all that subconsciously there might have been an affect? Don't you think you are scarred at all?"

His head whipped in my direction so fast I had to bite my lip to keep from yelping. "And what, exactly," he asked softly, almost menacingly, "has led you to this astounding revelation? What has it been in my behaviour that was so out of the ordinary that you think I am mentally scarred?" A mocking smile curved his lips as he graciously inclined his head to offer me the chance to reply.

My heart was burning slightly as this discourse progressed. Maybe I hadn't thought about this to myself before, but I had always realised something different about them. Something not exactly glaringly obvious, but odd nonetheless. Maybe it was the recognition of a kindred spirit, one scarred person to another, or maybe it was just me. Or maybe, it was the eyes of an unbiased individual looking at another and seeing what that person himself refuses to acknowledge. Whatever the reason, I knew I was right.

"It's not like that, Chris," I said tiredly. No matter what I said, he was not going to believe me. I understood that need to ignore what was right in front of me, to close my eyes and pretend that the mortar falling from the crumbling roof over my head was nothing but the soft patters of rain. But this discussion needed to come to an end. I could not leave it hanging, one way or the other. "It's just...have you ever noticed yourself around your brother?" I asked, my argument arranging itself into a neat pile in my head as I listed it out. "Or him around you? You both act so self-assured and competent. Him in his rod-up-the-arse kind of way, and you with your passionate explosions and righteous indignations.

"But," I continued. "I have seen you when the other's not watching. I have seen you crumble like a wall when you thought Alexander might die. I have seen him...well..." I trailed off a little, realising the time I had seen Mr. Rodwell unveiled was on the dance floor when he had almost kissed me. I cleared my throat. "I have seen him when you aren't around. The two of you feel this need to be your best around each other, to show only your strengths to the other. Because he doesn't want you to see the scared little boy out of the streets in a big house all by himself, and you don't want him to see the little kid who watched his parents die before his eyes and doesn't know how to move on." I took a deep breath and looked at him, almost pleading. "Does that make any sense at all?" I asked.

He was silent for so very long, I was almost sure he wouldn't reply. In fact, I almost didn't want him to. There was no good way this conversation could end, no nice little garden at the end of the road for us to laugh it all off in.

When almost two minutes of excruciating silence had passed, with him staring out again and me fidgeting with anything my fingers touched, he shifted. I turned to see him fiddling with the key in the ignition. He didn't say anything as the car revved. He said nothing as he brought the vehicle back on the road.

It was only as we started to speed towards our destination again that he said, almost too quietly for me to hear. "No, it makes absolutely no sense."

We reached the holding facility about fifteen minutes later than the time Christopher had assumed. The building was situated deep inside a nondescript field fenced in with barbed wires, with the ubiquitous 'Keep out, Private Property' sign hanging off the rusting gate, the stencilled letters already too far gone to be intelligible from afar.

Stopping at the barred gate, Christopher got out of the car. I watched the wind fiercely blowing his hair to the side as he approached the side of the entrance where, I noticed too late, was a rusty box-like apparatus, almost like the card-swiping machines you always see in high security facilities in movies. Only, this one was so run down and broken looking, it would have been terribly hard for anyone not suspecting to notice the tiny red light shining at its top right corner. I certainly didn't, not until Christopher swiped a card across it, thus turning said light green.

That done, he took some time to unlock the padlock across the fence from a key out of his pocket and push open the gate. I deliberated going out and helping, but then figured he had it covered.

"What's the use of the card and the lock," I asked as he got back into the vehicle, "if anyone could get inside by scaling the fence?"

He looked at me in mock seriousness. "Why would anyone go in? Can't you read the sign? It says, 'keep out'," he added helpfully. The shadows of our previous conversation seemed to have evaporated in the throes of the present moment.

I gave him the driest look I possessed in my arsenal of dry looks. He chuckled as he drove the car through the open gate and stopped it on the other side. "No doubt people have tried to get in. But there is an electric charge running through that fence, which the card disables. Believe me, people don't try a second time."

I looked at him in horror. "But-" I sputtered. "But that could kill someone!" I exclaimed.

He scoffed again. "Nothing less than they deserve for meddling in other people's business. But don't worry,"-here he turned around to smile at me-"the charge is not enough to kill a man, only to keep them away. Like I said, people don't try a second time."

After he had locked up the gate behind him and swiped his card across a second reader to engage the electric charge back on, he got into the car once more and we drove for about five minutes before the building came into view. On either side of the dirt track there were abandoned warehouses, overturned tanks, and coarse shrubbery growing sporadically wherever it could find a tenuous hold.

From the outside, the structure looked like an old building falling slowly into disrepair, but somehow not quite there, almost as if some unnatural force kept it bulwarked. It was three stories high, and coloured such a dull brown as to almost merge into the surrounding harsh environs. There was nothing remotely remarkable in the exterior, nothing over its façade to draw the wandering eye and keep it trained.

There were a few cars parked in the windswept parking lot, looking like they were hardly ever used. In fact, some even had broken windshields and slashed tires, making it apparent that this was further addition to the pretention of a ramshackle and uninhabited property. Christopher parked the car close to a boring white and old Toyota Corolla with broken windows and seats so worn by the harsh wind one would be hard-pressed to figure out their original colour.

There was silence in the car as he turned the engine off.

"You ready?" he asked. He was watching me with serious eyes.

I took a deep breath and my heart rate noticeably slowed. I hadn't even noticed it spiking up. "Yes," I said with conviction.

He nodded and smacked his hands on the wheel in finality. "Alright. Let's go."

He opened his door and stepped out. I pulled at the handle and stepped out too, wiping hair out of my eyes. I turned to look at him, only to find him already halfway around the car, almost as if he had been ready to help me out. Seeing me step out on my own strength, he stopped for a moment to take it in, clearly not used to the sight yet. Then he smiled and held up his hands.

I looked at the building I had come to visit from so far away, to meet a man I would rather not see for the rest of my life, and then some. I squinted to take it in.

"What is this place?" I couldn't help asking as Christopher stopped by my side and looked at the building too. It was almost like the two of us watched an unpredictable animal, ready to devour us whole. Or at least, I can be sure that I did.

Christopher started forward and I fell in step with him. "This compound used to hold warehouses for a chemical company operating from China back in the 1990's. After the company's stocks crashed quite horribly in an entirely unadvisable stunt in 1998, the property sort of got drowned in all the paperwork, essentially phasing out of the picture. Edward procured if two years later through some of his underground channels, though the paper trail couldn't possibly lead back to him even if a person ever tried, which no one has done as of yet."

"I see," I acknowledged. "And what use did he have for a desolate, possibly haunted cluster of buildings in the middle of nowhere?"

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "You don't think he could have found one?"

I didn't deign to reply. As he stopped before the rusty double door, I stooped down and wrapped my fingers around a good sized rock. I hid it among the folds of my abaya on straightening. Christopher, intent on his purpose, didn't notice.

Stepping through the doors led us into a shadowy and dusty vestibule. In the back of my mind, I had been almost sure that the façade extended only as deep as the front wall, and when we got inside, it would have been like walking into a completely white clinical, stainless steel and chrome heaven. Instead, it was like walking into the inside of the stereotypical eerie office, so claustrophobic I yearned to get back out the moment I stepped inside. I almost expected to find a phantom stepping out from behind the cracked marble front desk.

I put a hand involuntarily to my mouth as our entry stirred up a cloud of dust.

Christopher spared me a glace before stepping close to the desk and crouching down till his eyes were level with its top.

I followed close behind him, unwilling to be left alone at the entrance to such a dreary place. I wouldn't have admitted it ever, but maybe I was a little scared too. The place was so empty, and so out in the middle of nowhere, that it raised a fine sheen of sweat on my face. Christopher, on the other hand, seemed beyond relaxed.

A wide beam of sunlight streaked into the interior of the building through a broken down and half boarded up window, and in this light I watched Christopher lean a little closer to the green marble. I crept nearer and found myself not entirely surprised to find a tiny little camera embedded in the surface. Christopher moved his left eye so that it was closer to the dark little contraption, in a way that must have filled its entire frame.

Nothing specific happened for about two seconds, then a woman's voice sprang to life, spooking the living daylights out of me. For a moment I almost thought it was coming from all around us, and I might have given a little yelp. Soon, though, I realised it was only coming from behind the desk, where some kind of speakers were possibly hidden. "Person identified, Christopher Rodwell." The voice got decidedly more welcoming and less robotic. "Welcome back, Mr. Rodwell."

A pneumatic hiss filled the open chamber, and I whirled around to find the threadbare carpet in the middle of the floor cave a little in the middle, as if a hole had suddenly opened underneath it. Very slowly, the carpet started slithering into the hole.

"Damn," Christopher cursed, diving to catch the edge of the mat just as the whole thing almost disappeared into the hole. "Idiots."

Pulling the offending, moth-eaten piece of décor, he got back on his feet, his dark jeans now dusted a dull grey, the knees slightly frayed. He threw the carpet off to the side.

I stepped closer to the hole, weirdly fascinated by it, almost like one feels an irresistible pull to the edge of a precipice. It was about two feet in diameter, and seemed to have been formed as the tiles of the floor depressed and then pulled to the side. The underside of the tiles was lined with metal.

Inside, there were a series of small white lights marching downwards, illuminating a short ladder, ending in a circle of concrete ground about a couple of stories downwards.

"So, er..." I said uneasily, looking at Christopher to find him watching me with an amused expression. "We go down?" I wasn't sure if I was entirely comfortable with the idea. Maybe coming here wasn't one of my good decisions after all.

"We go down," Christopher agreed.

We went down.

The tunnel underground was cool and had a damp feel to it. Maybe it was that which distracted me a little, so that I didn't notice the man before he spoke.

"Welcome back, Mr. Rodwell."

I had been stepping off the last rung, the metal cool under my grasping fingers, finding it a little difficult to make my way downwards while still keeping the stone in hand and not making it clank against the steel handholds. I gasped explosively on hearing the unexpected words, almost losing my grip on weapon and rung. Christopher, who had preceded me down, was quick to grasp my waist and lift me off the ladder, so that I didn't fall down and break the recently fixed leg again, I assumed. I pulled my occupied hand slightly behind my back.

"You okay, Zara?" he asked.

"Why," I said crossly, my voice wobbling slightly, "can't you tell me when something like this is going to happen?" I turned around to face him, left hand on the left hip. "You're finding this funny, aren't you, when I squeak like a little girl?"

Christopher chuckled. "A lot," he murmured. When I started to open my mouth to retort, he was quick to continue. "This, Zara," he said, motion with his hand, "is Devin Powers, the head of operations here, though everybody just calls him Sergeant. Sergeant, this is Zara Mahal, the one I told you about."

I turned to look at the stocky little man I hadn't noticed. His head was shaved clean, and glittered in the faint light of the tunnel like the moon itself. His skin was a smooth ebony, and with his dark clothes, he could easily have been swallowed up in the shadows if he so chose. His eyes were slanted like that of a cat's, big and beautiful, set just a little too wide in the head.

When he saw me watching him, he inclined his head in greeting. "Madam."

"Sergeant?" I asked. "Sergeant of what?"

Christopher shrugged. "The men like theatrics, that's all."

I looked down the length of the corridor behind the Sergeant. "What exactly do you people do here?" I found myself asking, the question sort of shooting out of my mouth under its own power.

The Sergeant looked questioningly at Christopher. Christopher looked at me, still smiling faintly. "Finally, you ask." He turned to the other man. "Lead the way, Sarge."

As the Sergeant spun around and started walking, we fell in step behind him, and Christopher said, "Like you already know, Alexander likes to keep his fingers deep in all the pies around. This place," he swept his hand to indicate the dark tunnel we walked through, the alternatively placed lights illuminating and plunging us into darkness, one after the other, "he uses as a base. Sometimes he hands it out to others who might need a place to hide, sometimes he uses it himself; it all depends on the need."

"Are there other people locked up here?" I asked hesitantly, not sure if I was ready for a positive answer.

"This isn't a jail-cell, Miss Mahal," said the little man leading us. I looked at his back as he walked forward energetically. "This is a place the other Mr. Rodwell uses for any number of purposes, as he sees fit. When not in use, the place is empty. My men have other businesses to attend to as well. I don't see why you would think we keep people here for fun."

"So, what, you are a sleeper cell?" I asked. Our feet were making dull thudding noises against the concrete floor, the sound seeming to march ahead of us like that of an army. "Alexander is operating a sleeper cell?"

The Sergeant scoffed, sounding terribly offended. "You don't need to insult us, Miss Mahal. Our objective is not to incite terror in people. That's too juvenile."

I frowned, looking at Christopher in confusion. He sighed. "Look at it this way, Zara. Imagine Alexander as a kennel master, and all the lesser cartel heads or gang leaders as his dogs. They are vicious, dangerous, and can as easily bite him as each other. The only reason they even humour him is because he has the money and the name to get them to places they can't quite reach. What they don't realise is that Alex is humouring them too. He is keeping them happy, and simultaneously pulling their leashes tighter. He uses this place as a random base of operations, to keep his connections running, hold meeting, and other such stuff. He hosts them, playing the rich boy who wants a share of their world, while at the same time digging his talons in as deep as they go. Do you understand now?"

"He's taking over the city," I said, my voice sounding slightly awed, to my embarrassment.

Christopher took a moment to juggle the words in his head, considering them. Then he nodded. "He's taking over the city," he agreed.

The Sergeant turned right into another corridor up ahead, and we followed. The tunnels were boringly similar to each other, the monotony lifted occasionally by random metal doors punched into the wall. We walked past these, and turned into another corridor, and then another, and then another.

After how many turns I knew not, my sense of direction having been kicked in the kidney, we stopped before one of the doors. Two guards stood on either side of it, looking terribly bored, a condition that somehow remarkably transformed into an intense, singular focus when the Sarge gave them a look. They stepped to the side.

The door was similar to all the others we had passed, a metallic key card at the side needed to open it. The Sergeant didn't miss a beat as he swiping his card across the crack, eliciting a pneumatic hiss from the door, after which it slid to the side.

Christopher and I stepped inside. "I will wait here," said the Sarge to our backs. "Motion to the camera when you are finished and we will let you out."

The door shut itself with a sliding sound.

The room we were in was fairly large and coloured a clinical white. Harsh lights marched on the roof, the glare almost too bright to see through after the dim light outside. Maybe that's the reason it took me a moment to notice the large man handcuffed to the steel table in the middle.

Our entry must have raised him from a stupor, for he was lifting his head loosely when I turned towards him.

"Please..." The single word torn out of his mouth was nothing more than a tired whisper, like he had yelled it out loud too many times to count, and knew there would be no succour from what was to come even if he begged.

Nothing moved in my chest.

His hair had always been lanky and unkept but now they hung over his face in a relatively clean curtain, clinging to his forehead with sweat. His complexion was pale and drawn, his lips drooping down and a thread of spit slithering over his chin. His eyes hung down as if attempting to fall out of their sockets. There were no marks of violence on his face. No bruises or scratches or lacerations, nothing. In fact, he looked almost the same as he had been when he had been punching a helpless and terrified girl on the face.

"Please..." he said again, his head bobbing. "Don't, please. I know nothing. I know no-" His eyes had focused by now, and he took in his visitors. Obviously he had not been expecting what he saw, for his eyes widened slightly. His head almost snapped back again as he lugged himself straight. "Zara." His voice was barely a croak, yet clearer than before.

"Hello, Fred," I said. Christopher took a step back, allowing me the stage.

He blinked sluggishly, his hands clenching loosely on the table, and then tears started pooling out of his eyes. "Zara, help me," he begged. His head fell forward slightly, but he pulled it back up again. "Help me, please. Get me out of here. They will kill me, Zara, kill me. Please help me. Please." He didn't seem to have noticed the man I had arrived with, his attention wholly on me.

I stayed silent.

"They keep asking me what I know," he continued. "I know nothing, Zara, I tell them I know nothing. But they won't listen. I know nothing. Get me out of here, Zara, and you can come back and work for me. I will pay you more. I will let you off early. I will do anything you ask. Please, get me out. Please."

He tried pulling his hands up, as if to find them before me in supplication, only to be met with unrelenting resistance.

I took a step forward. "Fred," I said.

"Get me out, Zara, get me out..."

I stopped by the table. "Fred," I said again. "Look at me."

"Please, Zara, please..." He pulled his head up to look at me. "Get me out."

"Fred, do you know why I am here?" I placed a hand on the table, my other pulled behind my back, the stone I had hard against my palm. "Do you know why I came to see you?"

"Get me out..." he kept saying, not ready to hear anything else. "Get me out, please."

"Do you know where Meli is, Fred?"

"Get me out, get me ou-"

I grabbed his hair and pulled his head up. "Do. You. Know. Where. Meli. Is?" I asked again, emphasising each word slowly, speaking through my teeth.

He blinked again, ponderously, and a little part of me wondered what they had done to him. But I wasn't sorry. The rest of me was glad with whatever they had done, and hopeful they would do some more of it. "Meli...?" he said. The thread of drool out of his mouth thickened considerably, rounding into a drop of viscous spittle that pooled at the edge of his chin before dripped down.

"Yes, Meli. Do you know where she is? Do you know how she is?"

"I...I don't kn-"

I tightened my hold on his hair, making him wince, and jerked his head back violently. "She's dead, Fred. She's dead. You killed her." Not with his own bare hands, but he might as well have. "She's dead because of you."

"D-dead. I don't kow-"

"You killed her, Fred," I said again, leaning closer. His breath shot out of his lips in sharp gasps, the cloying and damp smell of it sharpening my senses in all the wrong ways. "She was only twenty-five. She had a whole life ahead of her if she so chose. She had a little girl who depended on her. And you killed her."

"I-"

"Say it!" I yelled suddenly, losing patience, the anger I felt at him rising before my eyes in a black cloud till all I could see was his pale face, like that of a ghost at the end of a dark corridor. My fingers tightened further in his hair, and I could have sworn I felt some strands come loose. "Say it! Say that you killed her. Say it!" I shook his head. Tears pooled out of my eyes. "Say it!"

"I don't know!" Fred yelled as his head snapped back and forth. "I don't know!"

"Zara," Christopher cautioned from behind me. I could feel his hand on my shoulder.

"Say it! Say it, you filthy arse! Say it, you-"

"Zara, that's enough," Christopher said again. His fingers tightened on my shoulder. "Let him go."

"He killed her, Christopher!" I said, the tears dripping off my face in continuous drops. "He killed her, and there was nothing I could do. Nothing. There was nothing Howard could do. This man is the reason she's dead!"

"I know," Christopher said softly. One of his arms snaked around my waist this time, the other pulling my fingers out of Fred's hair. "But you have to let him go now. Let him go."

"He killed her!" I sobbed.

"Let him go," he said again, his voice softer still.

Suddenly, all the pent up anger in my body leaked away, and I slumped against Christopher's chest, saying, "He killed her, he killed her," over and over. My fingers slid off Fred's head and fell heavily across his face. My nails scratched over his nose.

A heavy silence fell over the room as I sobbed on Christopher's shoulder. Fred was as silent as death behind us. Christopher's rising and falling chest filled my whole world.

After about a minute or two, I pulled away from him and wiped my face with a hand. "I am fine now," I said as he looked down at me with concern. He let his hands drop and I took a step back. "I am alright."

"This is enough, Zara," he said firmly when he saw I was back in control of myself. "There is nothing more here. Let's go back."

"Yes," I said. "Let's go."

Christopher let his breath out in satisfaction, turning around to look at the camera mounted on top of the door. He waved his hand at it and held a thumb up. I didn't move from where I was.

"I am glad you understand," Christopher said over his shoulder. "We must leave now. If he knows anything, the men will find out. Our work here is done. The man is suffering for his crimes already. In fact, I think-"

My hand, with the stone clutched inside, whirled around. Fred's eyes had time to widen a fraction of a second before my reinforced fist connected with his nose. There was the sound of a loud pop, before a gush of bright red blood shot out of his nose all over his shirt. He opened his mouth and a muffled scream came out, before his head snapped back and this time, stayed there.

Christopher spun around just as my fingers lost their grip on the rock and it fell from my hands with a crash almost thunderous in the succeeding silence. He gaped at me, his widened eyes taking in the slumped Fredrick Bosley, and then the smile on my face.

The fingers of my right hand were numb and I could feel the broken bones grating against each other. The pain didn't register. "Yes, Chris," I said pleasantly. "Let's go. Our work here is done."