Gabriel sat in a wooden chair at Scotland Yard, waiting. Maddy sat beside him, one hand on his knee. At the sound of footsteps, they looked up to see a green-eyed boy running toward them. Gabriel rose, rushing forward to hug his little brother. Behind the boy walking more slowly, was the curly-haired blond girl, Ellie.

"Gabe, Gabe!" Michael called pushing his face into his brother's chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry I let them take you, "Gabriel said. "I looked for you, but I couldn't find you anywhere?"

"I wasn't in that building," Michael said. "They said that I wasn't 'ready for auction' yet. I was locked up in the school."

"But I went to the school afterwards, and no one was there."

"That's because a man rescued us," he said. "After the others had gone to get ready for the show, a man came in and snuck us out of the school. We hid down by the reservoir. He told us to wait until we heard the sirens. Then we escaped through a hole in the fence and walked to the first police car we could find. I told them my name, and they brought me here."

"This man who helped you..." Maddy asked Michael, "What did he look like?"

"Tall, curly hair, big coat. It was dark. I didn't see him that well," Michael said.

"I'm glad you got away," Gabe said hugging his brother to his side. He was breathing heavily to stop himself from crying. "I didn't know what to do when I couldn't find you."

Michael reached out to take the blond girl's hand. "This is Ellie," he said. "She's my friend. She helped me, taught me the rules so that I knew how to fit in, so that I wouldn't get hurt."

"Hi Ellie," Gabe said uncharacteristically shy as he nodded to her. "Thank you for helping my brother."

"You're welcome," she said and she gave a small smile.

"She doesn't have any parents," Michael said. "So I told her that she could live with us."

Just then, the door banged open and a loud voice said, "Where's my boy!" They all turned to see Michael's father lumbering toward them. He rushed over and grabbed Michael lifting him up off of the ground. "My boy. My favorite boy!" he said hugging him to his chest. The man smelled of far too many beers. He lowered the boy to his feet, and got down on one knee to look him in the eye. He grabbed Michael's arms. "Now boy, tell me truth. Did they get ya? Did they do stuff to ya...bad stuff, like they did to Gabe?"

"No Daddy, " he said. "They hit me a couple of times but nothing else."

"Oh thank God!" he said with a sigh. "Then let's get out of this place and go home." He rose to his feet and took the boy's hand as he turned to the exit. Not once did he acknowledge his older son who stood aside sheepishly looking at the floor. The man stopped as Michael pulled his hand. "Daddy!" he said, "This is my friend Ellie. Can she come to stay with us for a while? She protected me, and she doesn't have a Mum or Dad."

The man looked at the little girl and his lip raised in an expression of disgust. "Get away from my son!" he yelled.

All of them stared at him in shock, but the man just pulled his son further away from the girl. Maddy stepped forward then and said, "She's just a child."

"She's a whore! You think I don't know one when I see one?" the man said.

The little girl shrank back at his words. Maddy also flinched, turning her head aside as she remembered what it had felt like to be called that word before. How much worse it must feel to the little girl who probably believed that she deserved the name.

The man grabbed his son's arm and pulled him across the room and out of the door. Gabriel shuffled out behind him.

Ellie was shivering. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she made no noise. It hurt Maddy to watch her. She knew then that she had been taught the hard way not to cry aloud.

Maddy bent down and hugged the little girl to her chest. "You forget what that mean man said," she told the girl. "He's drunk and stupid and he doesn't know you. Don't you listen when people call you bad names. You don't have to take the names that other people give you. You can make your own names, like wonderful girl, sweet girl, or valiant girl. That's who you are, Ellie? Okay?"

The girl frowned, her lips still shuddering.

"Other people can't tell you who you are. Only you can do that. You're going to be amazing. I know that you will be, Ellie, because you already are. You got out! You're free now! You can become anything that you want to be, but only if you believe that you can. Do you believe it, Ellie? Do you believe that you can be an amazing person, a wonderful person, if you try?"

The girl nodded then, the hint of a smile on her lips.

"Good, because I believe in you too. I'll find someone to take care of you Ellie. Not like those bad people, but like you should have been taken care of. Okay?"

The girl looked at her first with hope, then suspicion, then sadness. She had heard one too many false promises. A few moments later, the social worker came and took her away to be housed with the other rescued children.

.

Maddy walked to Lestrade's office. He was the center of a whirlwind. He had a phone to his ear, officers came in handing him reports that he passed to others after glancing briefly at them. He nodded to Maddy and then turned back to John, the phone still wedged against his cheek. "There's definite proof for the kidnapping, but we got there too late to stop him from wiping the computers," Lestrade said. "He must have had some kind of program designed to erase everything if he ever got caught. All of the computers at the school have been completely erased. The online servers too. It's going to make it hard for us to prosecute."

"Would this help?" John said pulling a metal box out of his pocket.

Lestrade froze for a moment. He waved someone away and then he hung up the phone. "What is that, John?" he asked.

"It's the hard drive from Blackwell's computer," John said. "I took it out when the raid started. He left me alone in his office, and luckily I had my army knife."

Lestrade grinned as he took the hard drive in both of his hands. "Bless you, John," he said. "I'm going to take this to the chief prosecutor's office right away." Then he rushed from the room with a flurry of officers following in his wake.

John was smiling when Maddy leaned over to touch his arm. "John, are you ready to go home? It's almost three," she said.

John looked at her then, his grin turning to an expression of concern, "Oh Maddy, are you alright? You look tired. You should go back to the flat."

"Aren't you coming?"

"Not now," he said. "I think that I'll stay a while longer. Let me call you a taxi."

.

When Maddy finally did make it back to Baker street, she closed the door behind her and fell back against it, then Mrs. Hudson's door opened, and Mycroft's pretty assistant walked out.

"Ah yes," she said pulling out her phone and sending a text. "The baby is sleeping peacefully. Mrs Hudson has her in her bedroom. I don't suggest you wake them. I was just told to wait until your return, and so now I'm off. Good Morning," she said cheerfully as she walked forward. She waited politely for Maddy to push herself up and out of the way before leaving through the door which she then locked from the outside.

Maddy slowly walked up the steps to the landing and then continued on to her bed. She collapsed on it exhausted in both body and spirit, falling straight into a sleep with no dreams.

The next morning she woke very late, but she still ended up rising before John. She baked some pancakes for lunch. The baby had grown so much since they had arrived. She had a tooth right in the top front of her mouth, and two tiny ones on the bottom. She took the pancakes and ate them happily. She also ate some applesauce and had juice.

That afternoon Maddy called Susanna who told her that her classes had all been dropped. She would have to enroll again afresh when the next term began. Maddy thanked Suzanna, then she hung up the phone. She leaned her head so far forward that her forehead rested against the kitchen table. What was she going to do now? Her money was almost gone, except for Eliza's college fund. Some money stashed in government bonds that she shouldn't touch.

John came out of his bedroom wearing pajamas and a red robe. He walked into the kitchen and put on the kettle eyeing the stack of pancakes on the table. "Those are for you," Maddy said. "I can make more if you want."

"Thank you," John said. "Would you like some tea or coffee?" He asked pulling a mug out of the cabinet?

"No," she said. "I really don't think that I could keep anything down after last night."

John dished a couple spoonfuls of instant coffee into his cup and then pulled out a plate and began to eat as he waited for the water to boil?

Already a pro at climbing up, Eliza was starting to walk. She tottered from one chair to another, falling over only to crawl amazingly fast across the floor. Maddy walked over to her and pulled out the set of alphabet blocks that Mrs Turner had bought for her. Maddy stacked them, and Eliza knocked them over, giggling.

The kettle boiled then, and John rose to make his coffee. He put his plate in the sink and walked out into the living room, nursing the steaming cup in his hands. "That was quite an amazing bust last night," he said. "The largest of it's kind. Thirty-five "guests" were arrested, many of them well known people. The papers are buzzing with the news."

"How many children did they find?" Maddy asked.

"Forty two, I think."

"Where did they take them?"

"They were all examined and photographed at a hospital before being released. I don't know where they are now."

"What's going to happen to them?" Maddy asked.

"I heard that they are asking for ninety-five years to life. No matter what, they are sure to spend a long time in prison for what they've done. Some of the evidence was quite conclusive. Lestrade was pleased," John took a sip of his coffee.

"I meant, what will happen to the children?"

"The children?" he said. "I don't know. Go to an orphanage, I suppose, or be sent back to their families if we can find them."

"And if we can't?"

"I don't know, but we got them Maddy! Can you believe it? It was one of Moriarty's worst and most hidden operations working here in London under everyone's noses and we got them! I haven't felt this good in a long, long, time," John said taking a sip before looking off into space and smiling.

John paced back and forth across the floor sipping at his tea. Maddy looked up at his face. He was happy. He was satisfied. He held a gun to an evil man's head and felt that justice was done, but justice was just another name for winning, and where there were winners, there were losers, and they weren't always who you might guess.

Maddy picked up Eliza. "I'm going out," she said and walked upstairs to dress.