As the sedative began to wear off, Jout slowly returned to consciousness. His exhausted mind needed some time to take in his surroundings; especially since he did not find the strength to open his eyes fully which meant he was barely able to see anything. With his sight blocked by his heavy eyelids, Jout's other senses came to a rising. He heard someone breathing loudly near him and another person shifting its weight from one foot to the other. From the direction the sounds came from he figured it must be Hans and Fritz. When he ever so slightly as to not raise attention to his waking up moved his feet and left hand, he noticed that they were chained to the chair he was sitting on. This meant he was back in the interrogation cell. Jout heard the cell door open and footsteps coming into the cell. He continued pretending to be asleep, hoping to postpone the next interrogation round for a few hours. But no such luck. The person who came in went over to him and put pressure on his broken collarbone, eliciting a painful cry from Jout.

"Ah, see who decided to wake up after all!" Fuhrmann exclaimed while he walked to his usual position in front of Jout, sitting down on the chair by the wall. "I see that our last meeting left you a bit injured."

Jout said nothing; only stared at Fuhrmann. It took him his complete mental strength to bear up against the blinding agony coming from his right collarbone. That he had not eaten or drunken anything for more than one day now was not helping his maltreated body; it only weakened him additionally.

"You know, the pain could stop immediately. You only need to tell us who the underground agent Papa Bear is, and I make sure that you will be admitted to a hospital. It's that easy," Fuhrmann explained. "Therefore, who is Papa Bear?"

Despite the terrible anguish he was in, Jout would never accept Fuhrmann's offer. "I already told you, I don't know any underground agent named Papa Bear. The only Papa Bear I know is a character in a children's story."

Fuhrmann shook his head and stood up. "My, my! Why do you always have to choose the painful way?" While he walked up to Jout, he retrieved a pistol from his coat pocket and let it hang from his index finger. Jout gulped, his eyes fixed upon the gun as Fuhrmann came closer. "You know, I'm getting quite frustrated by your uncooperative behaviour, my dear Lieutenant," he said, stalking around the chained Jout.

When he came around again and stood right next to Jout, he lunged out with his right hand and slammed the back of the pistol in Jout's face. There was a crushing sound heard as the gun touched Jout's nose and he fell backwards because of the force of the punch. Immediately, his nose started bleeding violently and another source of pain was added to his body. Jout began to feel dizzy; however, the ache from his nose was not as worse as the stinging ache in his shoulder. Especially since he fell on it because of the punch which only worsened the already tremendous pain coming from his shoulder. Fuhrmann snapped his fingers, ordering Fritz and Hans to tilt Jout up. When he was in an upright position again, the blood from his nose started running down over his mouth down to his chin, from there dropping down on his pants.

"You're a right mess, do you know that?" Fuhrmann laughed while he cleaned his gun with his handkerchief, adding red spots on the white tissue.

Jout spit the blood in his mouth out and grinned. "I'm still looking much better than you do."

"Oh, I see we have not lost our humour in here. That's good to see. However, I'm not quite sure if you will keep it up." Fuhrmann sat down on his chair again and twirled the revolver around his index finger. "You see, since the other methods of information retrieving have not worked on you, I have thought of something else. In this gun are six bullets which equals six questions. If you give me unsatisfying answers once again, I will shoot. On what I aim will be a surprise; maybe you, maybe the wall behind you. Who knows?"

Jout watched how Fuhrmann rose from his seat. His clouded mind needed a moment to register what Fuhrmann had said, but once it did his heart started to beat faster. He hoped that the major only wanted to scare him and therefore bluffed; however, the sardonic twinkle in Fuhrmann's eyes told him that the German was dead honest.

Fuhrmann came closer and stopped about three feet in front of him. He stretched his arm and aimed the pistol in his hand at Jout, who simply stared at Fuhrmann, determined to show that he was not intimidated by him. "First question: Are the prisoners in Luft-Stalag 13 involved in any underground activities?"

"No."

Fuhrmann pulled the trigger and shot over Jout's head, the bullet hitting the concrete wall behind him. The gunshot made Jout flinch, immediately regretting his movement because of his broken collarbone that send another wave of pain through his body.

"Next question: Does Colonel Klink know about the sabotage activities of his prisoners?"

Jout sighed. "There are no sabotage activities to know about."

Another shot, again right over Jout's head.

"Third question: Do you help downed flyers and escaped prisoners to return to London?"

"No."

Fuhrmann lowered his arm and pulled the trigger once more, this time shooting in the ground a few inches before Jout's left foot. Jout flinched again and he heard his heart beating in his ears.

"Fourth question: Do you have radio connection to London?"

"No."

Once again, a shot was heard, the bullet hitting the ground a few inches left to Jout's right foot.

"Next question: How come that no prisoner was ever able to escape from Stalag 13?"

"Colonel Klink is too good of a camp commandant. He's far too brilliant for us."

The bullet hit the ground underneath Jout's chair.

"Last question: Is Colonel Robert Hogan an underground agent named Papa Bear?"

Jout spit again to get rid of the blood that was running over his mouth. Then he answered, "I don't know how often I have to repeat it. My brother is an ordinary POW who only waits for the liberation and nothing more."

Fuhrmann began to grin and said, "Alright, you asked for it."

He pulled the trigger and this time, the bullet hit Jout's left knee, causing Jout to grit his teeth and clench his fists to prevent a painful cry. His knee was sending shock waves of caustic pain through his body that made him forget about the anguish in his right shoulder. Jout panted with rage while Fritz and Hans unchained him.

"Maybe you should start thinking about where your loyalty lies," Fuhrmann announced. "Your friends have not come to rescue you. I offer you a way out."

Fuhrmann left the cell and Fritz and Hans pulled Jout up from the chair. As soon as Jout put pressure on his left leg, the pain was unbearable and he fell forward. The tight grip of the Gestapo soldiers prevented that he crashed to the ground, and since he could not really walk, they simply dragged him along the corridors to his cell. All the while, Jout tried his best to breathe through the burning pain that was radiating from both his knee and shoulder. When they reached his cell, Fritz opened the door and Hans threw him in the cell like a bag of potatoes. They closed the door and Jout continued to lay on the ground; the pain was paralyzing him, making it hard for him to stay awake. But he had no interest in passing out again, and so he fought against the fog that was clouding his mind. He was still fighting his battle for consciousness when the door opened again several minutes later. Someone entered it and after the door was closed once again, the person ran towards Jout.

"Joshua, where does it hurt?" Jout heard Emil asking.

"I think he broke my nose," Jout managed to say. "And he shot me in the knee."

Emil turned Jout gently on his back. "And the cut on your forehead re-opened." He took a cotton ball from his bag and pressed it on the wound, then taking Jout's hand and pressing it on the cotton ball. "You know the drill. Apply pressure to stop the bleeding." After he took care of the cut, Emil crouched to Jout's left knee. He saw a bullet hole in the pants' fabric, its brown colour coloured in red. Emil took a scissor from his bag and said, "I know that as a POW you probably don't posses so many trousers, but I need to cut it to treat you. I'm sorry for that."

A half-awake Jout chuckled. "No need to worry. My best friend in camp is a tailor. He knows how to repair it in case I come back." Even though he trusted Emil with his life, Jout thought it was better to not mention that he was gay. He did not want to risk that the only person who helped him turned his back on him.

Emil cut the leg of the pants up to a few inches above the knee so that he could examine it. He was greeted by torn skin where the bullet entered the knee and much blood around the wound as well as running down Jout's calf. When he felt the back of the knee he couldn't find an exit wound, which meant the bullet was still inside Jout's knee.

"I have to feel for the bullet," Emil announced. "This will probably hurt a lot, but I need to find out where in your knee it is."

With a breathy voice, Jout said, "Al…alright." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then grabbed his garrison cap that lay next to his head and put it in his mouth to bite on it, just like he did when he reset his shoulders.

"I will first clean the wound," Emil said as he took a small bottle of alcohol from his bag.

He opened the bottle and poured the content over his hands and Jout's knee. His knee started to feel like it was burning, and Jout bit tightly on his cap, but Emil could still hear painful moans. He had to hold Jout's knee firmly in place because the injured American squirmed with pain. "I'm so, so sorry," Emil said as he put his index and middle finger of his right hand into the bullet wound. Under Jout's pain-filled yet muffled screams, Emil searched for the bullet while also feeling the bones to get a better picture of the damage the bullet had done. All the while, Jout pressed his thumbnail in his hand as he tried to distract his mind from the searing pain that Emil produced.

"The bullet smashed your knee," Emil announced after what seemed like an eternity, removing his hand from the wound.

"Aren't you…going to…remove…the bullet?" Jout asked between breaths when he saw Emil cleaning his hands.

Emil took a bandage from his bag and started to wrap it around the knee. "Rather not. Right now, the bullet is stuck right in the kneecap joint and it has pierced the anterior cruciate ligament. If I remove it now without repairing it at the same time, I will do more damage than good. And I can't repair it because I'm not a surgeon. So I will simply wrap it tight and when you get back to your camp, I'm sure Colonel Klink will organise a hospital stay for you."

Jout snorted. "You're really optimistic if you think I get out of here alive."

"Well, what else should I think? That you die in here? This thinking does not help the situation," Emil pointed out as he put a safety pin in the bandage to fix it.

"You remind me of my brother," Jout said with a small smile. "He's the optimistic one of us; got it from our mother. No matter what happens, he will stay positive and find a light at the end of the tunnel."

Emil moved to Jout's head to carefully examine his nose. "Then I would suggest you quickly adopt this optimism from your brother. In the end it all comes down to you; you're the one who decides whether to fight or to give up," Emil explained while he touched Jout's nose that was already swollen badly, and he could spot a deformed nasal bone. In return, Jout flinched away from Emil's touch and moaned in pain. "Yup, your nasal bone is broken, but there's nothing much I can do. I can only give you an ice-pack to cool your nose."

Emil helped Jout to sit up and pushed him to the nearby wall so he could lean against it and gave Jout the ice-pack, who took it gratefully and placed it on his nose. "I forgot to thank you for helping me. I don't know what I would do without you in here."

"No need to thank me," Emil waved off. "I simply do what every decent person would do."

"Well, there aren't many of you in this war," Jout said and smiled sadly.

Then the door was opened again and Fritz and Hans entered the cell.

"Treatment time is over," Fritz announced. "Major Fuhrmann wants to talk to him."

Emil stood up and immediately uttered his protest. "He is in no condition to be interrogated again. Besides, has Major Fuhrmann not talked to him about ten minutes ago?"

"Who cares in what condition he is? I only know that Major Fuhrmann ordered to get the prisoner back to interrogation. And that's what we will do," Fritz declared and pushed Emil aside.

He and Hans went over to Jout and pulled him up. They handcuffed him and dragged him out of the cell again.

While Hans brought Jout of the cell, Fritz stayed behind. He threw the ice-pack in front of Emil's feet and said, "If I were you, I would be careful where your alliances lie. You know what we do with traitors to the Fatherland." Then he swiftly left the cell to catch up with Hans, leaving a worried Emil behind.