A/N: Due to inactive author-beta contact, chapters will hopefully be coming quicker now...?

A was pondering.

This would be perfectly normal, were it not for the fact that the sun had not even risen yet. A liked to sleep lightly and get up at what B would call 'inhumane' hours, so she could have the silence to herself. After all, proper silence was a rare commodity in an orphanage.

"It has to be at least 5 in the morning," B forced out of his drooping mouth, rubbing his eyes as he shuffled into the living room.

"Oh, quite late then." A mused. "I read your notes based on the last three years. They're very well kept – you're not normally so diligent." She frankly said. B rolled his eyes while smiling.

"First real case, ya know." He grinned slightly, scratching the back of his head bashfully.

"You got help from Y," A said immediately, with a sour tone. B flinched.

"Only a bit," he whined. "Structure and stuff." A suddenly smiled contentedly.

"Very good work, B. Now – here's what I want you to do," He leaned in to hear what she had to say.


"You want me to find out who mans the Kings' Gang?" Eve said incredulously. L nodded.

"There's a pattern, here, on page 10 and…" he leafed through a few pages. "Here. There's a pattern in the times that the incidents take place – and there's a good chance that Kings' is organising when the groups stage their incidents."

"Just because Jacks' leader probably gets his orders from somewhere else doesn't mean Drunk Boy – or Ixey – does," Eve retorted.

"But did he look like the kind of person to be giving advanced tactical measures to his group?" L countered.

"People act differently when they're drunk," Eve testily said, putting on her jacket.

L raised his eyebrows and his mouth twitched into a smirk. "The fact that you're getting ready to leave signifies that you're going to carry through with our plan?" Eve sighed.

"At least give me a percentage before I go." L paused to think.

"I would say…8%. An extremely good chance nonetheless." She rolled her eyes.

"And I obviously ignore the other 92%. See you later…"

L reached out a hand in alarm. "You dyed your hair?" he said dumbfounded.

Eve did indeed, comparing to her almost mousy-brown colour before, had new, deeper auburn hair. L bit his thumbnail again, wondering how he hadn't seen that the night before.

She ruffled it slightly, smiling, before tying it up. "I reckoned it would help me with the change of identity," she said. "After all, I'm Y now, right?"

Eve strode out of the door and closed it with a degree of finality.

"Lock it!" L shouted after her a few moments after.

The lock clicked after a momentary pause.


B's eyes were still bleary.

It was barely 7 in the morning and under A's orders, he was at the main hideout of Queens', before anybody had turned up. Unfortunately, there wasn't any proper place to place a camera or recorder covertly enough so that it wouldn't be seen by any of the other gang members. So into B's jacket pocket it went.

"Jeez, Billy, why d'ya bother getting up so…damn…" the boy yawned. "early?"

"Lookout. Someone's gotta look after this place." He replied flawlessly.

"Yeah. And it's usually me." Macho Boy emerged from the mist. He looked vaguely threatening, and was arguably the only one out of the four there that actually looked like they belonged to a gang.

"I…was afraid we might get found out." B feigned fear. "Someone has to leave the signal in the mailbox!"

"Hey, yeah…" one of the boys started to say.

"Ay! No use blabbing about things that the police," he finished in a derisive tone. "Could listen to."

B shifted his weight. No, none at all.

As the members started to come in and filter into the disused house, B followed from behind, picking up his voice recorder and whispering into it.

"Jose Honduras…David Lechowski…Clarkson Woods…Lee Tanaka…Sofia Cumming---'

"Hurry up!"

"Yeah, I said I was coming!" B reached his hand to turn up the voice recorder, now safely in his pocket.


Eve sighed. The 'leader' of Jacks' even looked more stringent than Ixey of Queens'.

"Guys. We need to appoint a rat," the man said. As the group descended into confused mutterings, the girl entwined around his arm asked,

"What do you mean, Mike?" she giggled.

"I mean, Susie…that we need someone here, preferably new, to infiltrate the Queens'."

"What, like, spying?" Eve asked, careful enough to use her American accent.

"Sorta. Now Jacko here is the newest – and Evey the second," Both mentioned rolled their eyes at their unwanted nicknames. "All sorted?" the leader demanded, waving his hand in a vague motion.

"What the hell?! How the hell do we do that?" Jack shouted.

"You're saying that if we get caught, we know the least about you guys, so we're more expendable," Eve said with an irritated look.

"See – you're smart, you'll do it well." He said mock-reassuringly.

"And what if we don't want to? If I don't want to?" Jack seethed.

The congregation turned to him slowly, one by one. Each face bore a look of mild surprise, but the glares they gave were so piercing, accusing and just angry that Jack visibly recoiled.

"Fine, fine, whatever. No big deal." He muttered angrily.

The leader smirked, leaning his head on his girlfriends'.


"What am I meant to do? I don't know how to do this, heck, I don't even want to do this! But he'll kill me if I don't, and…" Jack babbled despairingly.

Eve shrugged. "You only joined 6 months ago. It's understandable that you don't feel comfortable yet."

"Do you?" Jack asked, as they reached the disused house with the dilapidated roof.

Eve paused as she jumped on a dustbin.

"Never." She hauled herself up.


"Ixey's not coming?! He can't have been that high on---"

"He OD'ed." The scared boy who had carried him revealed. "He's in hospital. We can't risk going in when the police are almost certainly watching him."

"Guys," Macho Boy stated as everyone immediately shut up. "We need to get our own on Jacks', right?" He stood up. "I'm gonna go get some air," he walked out of the house and headed off.

B rolled his eyes. He can't be that intimidating for anyone to notice and comment on the massive hole in the roof.

He kept an eye on Macho Boy through the window and deftly stepped out.

"Where're you going?" one of the young men asked.

"Loo." He blurted out the English word. Shit.

"Right, weirdo." He replied, turning his back. B raised his eyebrows. Well.

He swiftly followed Macho Boy to confirm A's suspicions.


"Shit, their leader's in hospital?" Jack whispered in awe.

"Seems so. Serves him right for being so hi----" she petered out as her eyes widened.

"Morning, L. Has A and B gone yet?"

"Yes, B departed his premises at somewhere between 5.00 to 5.30 in the morning. I believe A left sometime afterwards.

"I swear that's really early."

"You can't deprive someone of early morning walks, Eve."

Eve thought furiously.

He was drunk, but not high. But he's in hospital.

"Eve, what's the matter."

"The…" Eve sputtered. Think out of the box.

It's not impossible that B could have put something in his drink to look like an OD. And…

"Oh, my…Shit." Eve bolted off, Jack struggling to follow.

"Your what?!" he bleated.

And A's gone to the hospital to interrogate him.


Ixey's eyes slowly opened.

The lights that scorched his eyeballs were glaring and unforgiving – and his head was completely numb. Nonetheless, he raised it slowly from the stiff walls of the hospital storeroom.

There was a girl kneeling opposite him, twirling her plait and swirling patterns on the floor. Ixey squinted as the presence cleared her throat quietly.

"Contrary to what you may believe, Mr. Micheal Larsson, you have not overdosed on any kind of drug. My associate delivered a harmless substance in your drink, and…"

"I blacked out, and my mouth…" he muttered.

"The substance has some side effects, including numbness and often extreme nausea." A continued, tapping her pen on the floor between the mops. "Now, what can you tell me about how Queens' attacks are organised?" Ixey struggled to bring his mind back to reality.

Avoid the question.

"So the bad guys really do speak about all their plans in front of their victims, huh?" he struggled to smirk.

A cocked her head delicately. "I find your question hard to understand, Mr. Larsson. If you're assuming me to be the villain in this scenario, then I would answer that I haven't told you more than what you are entitled to know. Does that really make me the villain?"

"You're from the cops!" Ixey frowned.

"No I'm not," A calmly replied. Ixey exhaled, confused. He then steeled himself as he couldn't think of anything to reply with.

"We only react to what Jacks' does. We're not doing anything wrong – go ask them if you want knowledge!"

A stared him down, unblinking. As she thought, the fingers winding her plait sped up until some hair started to stick out.

"You've prepared your answers well, Mr. Larsson. Now…I have one last question before a hospital employee discovers us in approximately 2 minutes. Do you know of the chemical sodium…pentothal?"

"No," Ixey groaned immediately, his head still painfully numb.

"…also known as 'truth serum' in some circles?" A deliberately sounded out each syllable coldly as Ixey's eyes widened with each word.

"You're going to give me…"

"I have given you. Mr. Larsson, you've already given away some things in your sleep. You were very helpful," she held up a notepad page filled with writing.

"Omigod." Ixey breathed. "Even about Renaldo, and the warehouse…Houlden…and…" he gulped as A nodded.

"I must confess, though, Mickey, or should I say…Ixey," as A spoke Ixey with difficulty opened his eyes. "Truth serum is very hard to find, make and determine. Often, it is used in fictitious circumstances."

"Whaddya mean?" he said.

A knelt forward and softly passed the notepad which Ixey squinted at to read.

'Use
"Truth
Serum"
To Draw Out
His Lengthy
Confessions
Of
Past
Sins'

"From a certain angle, it does look like a legitimate list, does it not, Mr. Larsson?" A smiled for the first time. "As our 2 minutes…" the door slammed open, forcing Ixey to cross his arms over his head to protect himself. "Or less…"

"What the hell is going on here – is he a patient?!" the doctor examined incredulously at the bleary-eyed man.

"The standard of American healthcare results in, as I'm sure you know, pathetically long queues," A sniffed. "It would frankly be much easier obtaining cough medicine from the store room directly." She coughed lightly to prove her point as the bewildered doctor led Ixey away.

As A watched them go, she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Eve and a young man running behind her.

"1-nil, I think you'll find, Y." Eve glared at her rival and led a confused Jack out of the hospital.