Quick prelude: I was without Microsoft for like a week because my subscription ran out and I couldn't fix it immediately, but luckily it's renewed and we're good to go. I promise I'm working on Chapter 5 of Reconstructed, but that's very quickly looking to be a much bigger project than I anticipated. I want to do another multi-chapter thing that's still a bit more contained, so that's what this is. I'm taking a similar approach to this as I am with Reconstructed, but only in that I'm combining movies - the end of 2 (which I've deviated a bit from), the premise of 3, and the setting of 4, and the casts of all of them. I hope you enjoy it.

Wow, that prelude was not quick at all.

Please let me know what you think, and as always, happy reading! - Inky

Kirsty woke up with tears in her eyes to the sound of her cell phone ringing right next to her ear. She blinked, and found enough focus to reach for the phone and look at the screen.

Dr. Channard's Office. She threw her phone at the foot of her bed, and it bounced once before settling, still buzzing and playing that ringtone she was starting to hate.

Kirsty swallowed and wiped her eyes. She was in a hotel room, she remembered as the dream started to fade, and she was on the bed.

One of the beds.

She looked to her left. Tiffany was wrapped up tight in her own blankets, sleeping like the phone had never started ringing. Kirsty couldn't imagine how she was able to relax after everything, even a week later, but Tiffany had been sleeping soundly every night since they'd left that miserable place. She was the only one, though.

Kirsty heard movement, the creaking of springs and looked ahead at the sofa. She could barely see in the dark, but the woman's voice was clear, if quiet.

"Are you alright?" Joey got out of her sheets before Kirsty could formulate an answer. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, and in the shadows her head looked like a small, oddly-placed snowman. Kirsty didn't know why that thought helped, but it did.

"Phone," she finally answered weakly, and pointed to the dejected piece of metal. Joey walked over and picked it up, handing it back to Kirsty, who placed it back on the side table. The clock's red numbers burned angrily in the dark: 5:30 AM. The curtains were shut, but there was no light bleeding out from them.

"You should probably block them," Joey said, and for a second it looked like she might push some hair from Kirsty's face. "They're probably not going to stop." Kirsty leaned away by trying to lie back in bed; nobody had touched her hair since her father's passing, with the exception she did not want to think about. She didn't like the idea of other people touching her hair. She saw Joey's hand lower by her side.

"Yeah," Kirsty answered, and glanced at her pillow. Rough, itchy, but at least it wasn't the hospital's. Never again. "I will."

She hugged it, and the back of her wrist brushed against something metal.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Joey wasn't her mom, or her friend, but Kirsty did feel less alone with her and Tiffany, and that was something, at least. She looked back up at the reporter, and half-smiled in the dark.

"Yeah, I am," she said, "gonna try and get some more sleep." Joey nodded, seemingly assured, and left. Kirsty's hand searched under the pillow, and found the thing she was looking for.

She closed her eyes again, and tried to relax, squeezing the length of the cold pin in her tired hand.

Terri only owned the Boiler Room because nobody else wanted it after J. P. disappeared. That was what she told herself when they handed the rights to her, saying they were in her name in his will that had clearly been made as a joke when it was read aloud. J. P. Monroe was supposed to live forever, but he'd been found missing from his bedroom with the walls covered in enough blood that the experts were convinced he was dead without ever seeing a body.

Of course Terri was upset, but there was something about having stuff that distracted her. It was like his last attempt to mock her had folded in on itself; her lawyer had helped her understand the inheritance laws and what she could do with the stuff she had, including selling it.

So she was selling it. An auction of all his stuff – and people wanted it, which was crazy – that lasted for four days so far, this being the fifth. The only room untouched was his bedroom, because nobody wanted to go in there, except to retrieve one weird, ugly thing.

The column of concrete was kind of horrible, which was probably why J. P. had liked it. It was covered in writhing figures and depictions of what was either really kinky sex or uncomfortably sexual torture. And a face, covered in pins, asleep.

The sculptor had to have been a freak, Terri thought, because without the pins the face would probably have been a bit hot. Which was weird.

The sculpture was the one thing nobody wanted to buy. She hadn't made a fortune off his stuff, but she'd made enough to afford an apartment's rent for a while, so she wasn't all that torn up about it. As she stood around the empty building and stared at the thing on a Friday evening, the door swung open.

The woman was the prettiest Terri had ever seen. Her eyes were dark, her lips red, her hair in curls pinned to the top of her head with something jeweled. Terri – who wasn't even going to pretend she'd never looked at a girl, because that's why she didn't have a place of her own or with her parents to start with – could not look away. She even put out her cigarette and tossed it in the garbage.

The woman's heels clicked against concrete, and she walked towards the column with a soldier's purpose. She looked at it, staring intently with those dark, pretty eyes, and Terri could not stop looking at her looking at the sculpture. She pursed her lips and looked down at her pocketbook, and Terri barely noticed it clicking open because she was distracted by those velvet-gloved hands.

And then those velvet-gloved hands were putting a wad of bills into her hand. Bills in hundreds.

"No need for change," the woman said in a voice like red wine, and Terri looked up at her and nodded, dumbfounded. She looked down at the wad of bills – and Terri knew how to spot a real bill – and marveled that they were.

"Oh my god, thank you," she started to say as she looked up. But the woman and the statue, just like that, were gone.

"Tiffany," Kirsty signed, "I'm going with Joey to the opening of the Merchant Art Museum. We'll be gone for about an hour and a half. Will you be alright?"

"I will," Tiffany responded, a smile on her face, "I'll text if I need anything, but I'm probably going to get some reading done." She had taken to sign language almost effortlessly. Seven years later Kirsty still struggled at times to keep up, but she couldn't help but feel a little bit of joy every time Tiffany's face lit up while talking about something. Speech therapy was something they'd discussed, but for now Tiffany was happy and communicating and that was all either could ask for. "That book Joey bought about the skeleton and the murdered uncle is really good so far. I want to finish it today if I can."

"Great!" Kirsty always spoke and signed at the same time, mostly because she still made mistakes and if she was lucky, Tiffany or Joey would catch her. "I'll be checking my phone. If you need anything at all, you know what to do." Tiffany nodded and smiled, and held her arms out. Kirsty grinned and hugged her. "Alright, I have to go. Remember to text me!"

"I will!" Tiffany followed her to the door and waved her off as Kirsty walked out. Kirsty glanced back in time to see the apartment door shut, and the click of the lock. Assured, she made her way out of the building and onto the curb, just in time to catch a taxi to the office.

If they could beat traffic, she thought as she started doing math and thumbing bills ahead of time, she would get there just in time for a cup of coffee before they headed to the opening.