Author's Note: So, here is something I think people have been waiting for... Maybe two somethings? I'm not sure. It's not everything, though I stick to a promise, there is that coming... I just haven't gotten there yet. I did spare everyone (okay, mostly me since I couldn't bring myself to write it) a drawn out chapter about the searches and traveling. As for the rest...

Zollner said the chapter should end where it does. I'm finding he's not one to argue with. He's creepy. He scares me.

Defeat and Despair

"Time to face the inglorious defeat."

Nancy looked over at Joe, not sure how he could stand to make a joke right now, but then she figured he had to or he'd just shut down, since he was as close to that as Frank had been not long ago. Joe needed someone to fight, but Zollner was a phantom. They didn't have any leads on him—as far as the authorities were concerned, he was still in prison. Everyone connected to the Hardys—law enforcement or not—was out searching Zollner's holdings, and Nancy's friends were doing the same. She'd called in every favor she had, and she knew Joe had done that, too.

That still left them with exactly zero idea where Frank was.

Zollner hadn't gone back to anywhere none, and as the search teams made their way through the lists, the number of places left to search grew smaller, but not in any comforting sense. Nancy wasn't sure they'd find Frank in any of those places—she was more certain that they wouldn't.

"You haven't told them yet, have you?" Nancy asked, pulling herself back to Joe and where they were just as Joe opened the door to his parents' house.

Joe winced. "I... um... Not exactly."

"How did you expect to keep it from them when you asked for the property list and have all of your friends searching those buildings?" Nancy asked, looking at him. "Joe, I know you don't want to upset them, but they must already know."

"I know. It... Well, this is going to sound stupid and put me back to where I was before we did most of our work together—such a child—but... I don't want to face them. They'll blame me, and I already blame myself. I don't think I can take it from Mom, Dad, and Aunt Gertrude. It is my fault—I knew better than to leave Frank alone—"

"I left him, too," Nancy reminded him. "We both knew someone should stay with Frank, but we both chose to go. I am as guilty as you are if not more so."

Joe looked at her. "How is that even—"

"In a word? Ned."

Joe winced. "Yeah, I suppose you've got me there. I can't compete with that. And I don't want to. I don't know what I'd do if something happened to... Oh. Hello, Mom."

Nancy looked over at Laura Hardy. Inglorious defeat indeed.

The older woman seemed to pause, choosing her words before she spoke, and Nancy couldn't quite pin down the emotion that prompted them. Anger? Fear? Relief? "You'd better come in and sit down, Joe. You, too, Nancy. I think we all have a lot to discuss, don't we?"

"Mom, I am so sorry. I swear I thought I was doing the right thing, taking Frank to work on the case, and while he had a few moments where he was—he was doing better. I swear. He managed to pull threads together despite Ned attacking him and Zollner calling to taunt him—he was being the old Frank who managed to think through every crisis—and he was fine when we left him. We weren't even gone that long—"

"Joe," Laura broke in, interrupting him. "I am not blaming you for what happened to Frank. I knew he had to go, same as your father did. Same as you did. Even Frank knew that. Do I feel guilty for encouraging him to go? Yes. Am I scared out of my mind that this time I am going to lose my son? Yes. But I refuse to lose both of you because you're drowning in guilt. Frank has done enough of that—and I'm afraid you just don't get a turn."

Joe snorted with the last of her words, and she stepped forward to embrace him. "I see you're playing favorites again."

"As if that role is one to covet," Laura muttered. "We both know it isn't, and we know that you have your own burden when it comes to guilt. Right now, that will drag us all so far down we can't do what needs to be done. That can't happen. Easier said than done, of course, but I don't want us to lose Frank because we're all so caught up in the 'mistake' of letting him go that we can't see what we need to do now."

"I'm not sure what else we can do," Joe admitted. "We've got Zollner's property list, and we've got people searching them. Our friends with badges have done some talking to Zollner's people, but that's still as much of a dead end as it was before—they are way too loyal to him to say anything."

"Only that's not loyalty, is it? Zollner has them all brainwashed into what seems like loyalty but isn't," Nancy said. "Maybe a deprogrammer could help them overcome it, someone like the doctor that Callie's seeing and we sent Ned to."

"Well, he's already got a lot on his hands with those two, but..." Joe trailed off, looking at his mother for a moment. "Has anyone actually... talked to Callie?"

Laura frowned. "Not that I know of. I don't think anyone was anxious to tell her that Frank was missing again, even if things are... strained between them."

"Strained? Try broken," Joe muttered. He shook his head. "No, I just thought... Callie was with this guy for a long time—well, someone working for him, at least—and now that she's got control of more of her memories, she might be able to tell us about when he had her. That could give us something we didn't have before. Or it might be nothing."

Nancy shook her head. "I think you're right. Someone should talk to her. I'd say we should talk to Ned, too, but... he doesn't have any memory of being taken or programmed. If he hadn't attacked me, we still wouldn't be sure that he had any programming at all."

Joe nodded. "Yeah, and we all gotta wonder if we're in the same boat. What's gonna set us off?"

Laura winced. "Nothing, I sincerely hope, though Frank has been worried that you would be a target for them. Everyone knows that you're close and taking out one of you effectively takes out both of you, though in the end, you two usually overcome that and free the other. Still... it is a strategy multiple people have used or at least thought of."

"We won't know if we have triggers until they're activated," Nancy said. "For now, we have to operate assuming we don't and hope for the best. The only way to combat what we might be is for us all to stop and lock ourselves away to keep from hurting someone, but that's when Zollner wins because no one would be able to fight him then, no one would be looking for Frank. When we find Frank, we can deal with the possibility we're all programmed. Until then..."

"Yeah." Joe swallowed. "I'm gonna go see if Callie will talk to me. I really don't think sending you there is a good idea, Nancy. No offense."

She held up her hands. "None taken. There are other things I can do to help find Frank."

"I didn't think any of you wanted to see me."

Joe winced, shutting the door behind him. Callie's apartment—more like her room—was small, and he could see most of it from right next to the front door. He didn't have anywhere to go to avoid that statement or this conversation, overdue as it was. "It's not that, Callie. It's not... Trust me, none of us blame you. Frank definitely doesn't—he can't stop blaming himself for one whole minute. It's... Okay, so we were never great friends, you and me, but I could have come by and talked to you at least once. I mean, after you got out of the hospital. Well, I think I excused it as that I'd make things worse or set off one of your triggers, but I was just... being myself. I put Frank first. It's what I do."

Callie forced a smile as she sat down in the chair. That thing was hideous, but then what did Joe really expect from a thinly disguised psych ward? "I bet you barely left his side."

"Yeah, that would be about right," Joe agreed. "He is pretty damn sick of me, I know that. He won't say it, but I know he is. He uses every opportunity he can to be alone, even if he really shouldn't be alone."

Callie nodded. "I know that feeling a little too well. Not that people are hovering. They're not."

Joe took that as the mental slap it was. He kind of deserved it. "No one wants to risk making it worse. You know that's why Frank stayed away. He is so convinced that he will make you do something else you don't want to do, and he can't live with that."

She blinked, looking like she might cry, and Joe wanted to kick himself. She rose again, moving from her chair to the window, looking out. "This place is strange. Being here is. I always figured my first apartment would be after a year or so at the dorms in college or maybe moving in with... But now I have a space of my own. In a mental ward."

Joe looked down at his feet and forced his eyes back to her. "You didn't deserve this, Callie. No one does. What Zollner did to you—No one can say they're sorry enough, no one can make it right. Frank shuts down just trying to think about a way to do that."

She ran her hands over her arms. "I just wish I didn't scare myself. The things I did, now that I can remember them..."

She closed her eyes, shuddering.

"I'm sorry," Joe told her. He drew in a breath and let it out. "I was... I actually wanted to talk to you about some of those memories. Not what you did after we found you, but... before. When Zollner had you. I was hoping that—"

"Joe, what happened to Frank?"

"Frank is—"

"Don't you dare say he's fine. I know you wouldn't be here if he was fine," Callie said. She folded her arms over her chest. "What happened to Frank?"

"Zollner has him again. And we have no idea where he is."

"I see you're awake again, Franklin."

Frank swallowed, gagging on something and turning over to puke. His hands jerked on the cuffs, and he grimaced, trying to scoot away from the mess he'd just gotten on the floor. Whatever that drug Zollner had given him was, it did not agree with his stomach. Or maybe that was just from getting shot in the head. Frank couldn't be certain. He also couldn't feel his feet again, which was a bit of overkill considering the head wound and the cuffs.

Unfortunately, Zollner didn't underestimate him, and Frank actually missed the criminals that did.

"I see you are a master of the obvious," Frank said, allowing Joe to speak there for a moment. "Do I have to spend the rest of my time here—wherever here is since we're no longer moving and this is not a limo and I don't remember getting from the car to wherever this is—but I assume that was the point of the drugs currently making my stomach dance all its contents up my throat—do I have to spend it next to that? Because I probably will vomit again if I do."

Zollner crossed over to him, a smile on his face that made Frank feel like puking for a reason completely unrelated to the drugs. "I am tempted to say no, as I am well aware you will try and escape if I release you from the cuffs."

"I can't feel my feet," Frank said, though he wished he was lying about that. He had no idea where he was. White walls, no distinguishing signs of warehouse or basement, more like an apartment but so not likely to be one—was he on one of those sets? A room built inside a warehouse or someplace else, one designed to make it seem like he was maybe in an apartment or house somewhere only he wasn't?

Nice of Zollner to screw with his head that way, too.

"That is temporary, of course," Zollner told him. "When we are back at work, I do want you to be able to feel everything."

Frank almost wished there was enough in his stomach to allow him to puke on Zollner. As it was, all he did was gag. "You're sick."

"You assume madness is the only reason I act in this manner, don't you?" Zollner looked at him. "Would you believe that I might have once been like you? That I could have been something much different from the man you see now?"

"You could have been different, sure," Frank said, pulling on the cuffs as he tried to move again. Not much give there, not that he expected it, and without his feet to leverage himself, he doubted he could do much about the cuffs. "You're not, though. You chose to be a psychopath. And a sadist. A murderer. And a—"

"You believe this life is something one chooses?"

"Are we going to have a nature versus nurture debate? Because I am not sure I actually buy the idea that people are just 'born bad,' but that's not a conversation I want to have with you. I don't want to have philosophical debates with my kidnapper, thank you very much."

Zollner took out his knife, and Frank jerked, managing to hit the wall or whatever it was he was actually chained to in his panic. "There is still time for us to debate philosophies later. After all, I do intend for you to stay here on a more permanent basis this time."

Frank shook his head. "You know that's not going to work. Either they will find you, I will escape, or I'll just starve myself rather than let this go on."

"You are so painfully stubborn," Zollner said, stabbing the blade into Frank's side. "I like to think I was, once, though I truthfully don't remember."

Frank's eyes went from the blood spilling over the knife to Zollner's face. "Wait... you're saying... you... you were brainwashed like all the people you've brainwashed?"