Alex's damp head throbbed distractingly as she sat in the hot darkness, struggling to concentrate on her surroundings. The collar of her silky, plum-coloured shirt clung to the back of her neck like clingfilm to a wet surface. She could feel her pristinely curled hair, normally shiny and arranged in a careful dark frame around her face, beginning to hang limply in the humidity. She clenched her clammy hands and looked around a little frantically. She could see nothing. A cloying sense of agitation was spreading in her chest as her pulse spend up and her heart hammered deafeningly in her head in rhythm with the throbbing in her temples. She attempted to take deep breaths, but could only manage frenzied gasps.

Was she dreaming? Hallucinating? Was there anything here, in the blackness, which might bring her news of herself? She could be dying…she knew she'd come close to it before, several times. She knew she'd heard talk of giving up on her. The thought of that made her heart hammer even faster. She shook her head, screwing up her eyes in anguish. No.

She raised her head, unclenched her palms. There had to be something here, something she could use. Hesitantly, she opened her dry mouth and called out into the humid blackness.

"Hello?" her voice sounded hoarse, and not quite loud enough. She made a weak attempt to clear her throat. "Hello? It's Alex Drake. Am I…alive?"

Nobody answered. No sounds betrayed anything about where she was other than the slight echo in her voice when she spoke, from which her keen analytical skills (constantly turned on these days) deduced that she was in a room, quite large, with few or no soft furnishings.

It was uncomfortably hot. And dark. Or had she gone blind? That would certainly explain the terror that had begun to take hold of her. Alex Drake was not normally afraid of the dark. She hadn't been since she was a very young child. That was what she felt like now; a young child in the dark.

"Mum?" Alex's breath caught in her throat as she heard a voice coming from…somewhere. She couldn't place where. "Mummy?"

"Molly! Molly?" she tried to call out, but she still couldn't manage more than a hoarse, choked whisper.

"Mum, wake up. Will you please wake up? I'm waiting for you to wake up, mum."

"I'm awake! I'm here I promise, please don't-" she broke off, choking. Her throat was raw with the effort of trying to force out more than a whisper.

"Mummy, please-" Molly's voice was suddenly cut off, and Alex was looking at her own reflection in a pair of big, dark shades.

Bang.

A bullet whistled towards her.

"BOLLY!"

Suddenly she was in blackness again, but she was no longer afraid. And no longer dreaming.

Her head had burrowed it's way into the crook of her arm and her face was pressed uncomfortably against the cool, wooden desk she was sitting at. Slumped in her chair, she kept her eyes stubbornly closed. Her head was still throbbing and the gunshot was still reverberating in her ears.

"Listen, Bolly-kecks, you ruddy bloody wake up of yer own free will or my expensive boot will be making contact with your bony arse and you'll have no bloody choice."

D.I. Drake opened her eyes reluctantly. She sat up with a yawn, and mumbled an incoherent apology.

D.C.I Gene Hunt looked down at her stonily. "Sorry, but is the coffee machine bloody broken? No sleeping on the job, Bolls, not on my watch."

"Sorry." She said hoarsely. "I'm a little hung over this morning." Gene looked at her patronizingly.

"Snap. Now move that pointy arse of yours. You and I are going to the zoo." He turned away and strode towards his office. Drake watched discreetly for a moment. He was the most frustrating man she had ever met, but probably also one of the most brilliant. And as little as she wanted to admit it sometimes, she knew that without him the place she was in would be a difficult place in which to survive, regardless of reality. However annoyingly and obscurely, he was always there for her. In a lateral sort of a way, they were close.

She stood up, returned a smile from Shaz ("Al'right, ma'am?"), holstered her gun (she assumed she would need it) and dashed after Gene, who was now striding out the door, his masculinity practically emanating off him in visible waves.

In a flurry of clicking heels, slamming doors and revving engines, they were soon encased in the red, speeding blur that was Gene's Audi Quattro.

"Okay, fill me in." Alex said briskly, looking through the window to fix her hair in the wing mirror.

"Well, dozy-bloody-bolly-kecks, while you had a refreshing little nap, our humble services were called upon regarding some bastard that shot a monkey at London zoo. And a member of staff."

"Anything else? Who was the staff member killed?"

"Sally Vincent. Eighteen years of age, animal lover, tarty sorta type. That's all I could get over the phone."

"Tarty?" D.I. Drake said in a cool voice.

"Sorry, did I offend your precious ears, Bolly?" Hunt said acidly. "I'll rephrase that-"

"Don't bother." Alex snapped. "Why was she a 'tart'?" she gesticulated in the air with her fingers as she said the word.

"Back to finger-waggling, are we? Anyway, how the bloody hell do I know how the mind of a tart operates? I don't bloody know why." Gene barked as the Quattro swung dangerously round a corner, causing Alex to have to cling to her seat. "Bet you have more of a bloody clue than me." He added suggestively.

Alex sighed. "Evidently what I meant to ask was 'what were you told that caused you to use such an offensive term'." She snapped. "But it's okay, don't bother answering if it's beyond you-" she broke off with a scream as in a sudden blur and a loud smack, something fell from the sky and landed in a hard collision on the shiny red bonnet of the Quattro, before rolling off and hitting the gravely, off-road ground Gene had been driving so dangerously on.

Gene braked extremely hard and Alex lurched forward in her seat with the sudden, violent movement.

"Shit!" he growled, just as Alex gasped in horror.

The body of a child lay in the middle of the road, a tiny bead of blood dripping from her mouth.

"Bloody hell."