WARNING: this chapter is another reason that the fic was rated M. Highly graphic and with adult themes that some may find distressing. Also, the language used towards the end of the chapter is rather unsavory, but is most expressive.

If only they knew. Meaningless sheeple, wandering these aisles searching for the best deal on Hovis best-of-both bread and toilet roll, they had no idea. Blinkered by the petty trappings of their trivial lives, the members of the public that surrounded Claire in the supermarket could not see – or did not want to see – the shadow of a woman that passed by them. It was as if they all refused to take note of her gaunt face and pursed mouth, of her suspecting, darting eyes and her clothes that covered as much flesh as they could.

No, they did not want to see, and that is why she loathed them.

Her pale hands skimmed the products on the shelves with an outstretched arm so that she always had the sticking plaster attached to her wrist in her eyeline. As if she could run! He would always know where she was, always keep a watchful eye on her movements. If she went to a pharmacy for drugs, he would know. If she went to a garden centre for power tools, he would know. If she went to a culinary store for knives, he would know.

What he didn't know about this store was what they offered.

"I'm sorry," she almost wept to the man behind the counter. There was no doubt she looked like she needed what she was asking for. "I don't have my prescription. I haven't been able to sleep in days, I need my medication. I'm starting to have micro-naps, I'm worried I'll walk out into traffic or – or – oh, God, I don't know…" He looked like he couldn't handle her hyperventilating. "I just need benzodiazepine or I'm going to… oh, my God, help me…"

"I can't give it to you if you don't have your prescription," the man protested hopelessly. "I'm really sorry, madam."

Eyes full of feigned desperate tears, she met his irises and thought of another universe where he gave the pills to her without question. She must have forged a prescription that time. He looked so confused that he may as well already have given her the drugs.

"I think I… remember… seeing you before," he murmured, half sure and half not. She nearly smiled at his suggestibility. "Yes, it can't have been that long ago, I remember it so vividly… you were wearing a blue hooded sweater, am I right?"

"Yes," she said meekly. "It had a white bit inside the hood…?"

"I remember! Goodness, I'm so sorry," he breathed. Shaking his head at his own 'forgetfulness', he turned to retrieve the Loprazolam from the bottom shelf of the locked cabinet. "Here you go. It's a free prescription because you're a student, isn't it? I remember."

"T-thank you," she mumbled, wiping away her faked tears and stuffing the tablets in her bag. "My insomnia's been so b-bad; I don't know what I'd do without these."

"Yeah, they knock you right out, don't they?" he agreed. "Well, have a good day, love, and get some rest – you look absolutely exhausted!"

And so she was. As she paid for the rest of her shopping at the checkout, she longed for a single bed where there was not enough room for someone else to join her, where she could drift away into oblivion on a wave of dreamless sleep. This afternoon, she would do as she was told. She would make him lunch. She was the obedient Harley Quinn to Mikami's Joker, following each instruction he issued with attentiveness and care, and cooking was no exception.

That's what it took to survive, after all. And this man had made her very desperate. It was evident from spending one night at Mikami's house that he was not a man to be easily manipulated or fooled with. In the past, she'd met men malleable as clay, able to turn their heads as she was with some small tricks she'd learned with careful observation. Mikami, on the other hand, did not give her hope of reprieve in the mental torture he supplied. Under the pressure of constant vigilance, she could almost feel her mind snapping.

At the stove, she stirred the soup Mikami had asked for and added her own special ingredients. A full, flavorsome dish like the chicken, paprika and chorizo soup she had prepared unwittingly provided her with the opportunity she eagerly sought. Five of the pills from the packet would be plenty. Any more and he would taste the difference; plus, she would have to eat some of the soup or else he would suspect that it had been heavily drugged.

The ciabatta breads were ready on the side for serving when he came through the door. His arms were around her quickly so as to exert as much control as he could manage on his victim. Whispering sweet nothings in her ear was not so much affection as a game he liked to play. His mood may switch at any second.

"Lunch?" she offered, and took the bowls out of the cupboard so as to serve the meal.

"It smells good."

"Tastes good as well, but I burnt my tongue making sure it was perfect," she sighed.

"Oh, shame." Fiercely, he caught her mouth with his own and held her head in place by gripping her hair at the back. Eventually, he let go and gestured for her to serve the food she'd made.

She did so. Everything in her begged her hands not to shake as she placed the pan next to the bowls and ladled the soup into them. Knowing her companion's proclivity for neatness, she wiped any spillages with a kitchen towel. He was watching her when she took the bowls to the table and moved the ciabattas onto a wooden plaque to place in the centre of the display. Even the flowers were carefully arranged, almost right-angled in their accuracy.

"What kind of flowers are those?" he asked lightly.

"Rhododendron," she responded. "They looked beautiful in the shop so I thought they would make a nice addition to the table."

"You always think of everything," he cooed, and she froze, sensing an edge to his voice.

For a few more minutes, he continued to eat, and she could tell that as he did so he was enjoying prolonging her agony. He could probably hear her heart hammering under her ribcage. As he reached across to pick up a ciabatta, he stopped and took note of the way she was looking at him. The next words that left his mouth were bitterly cold, as if devoid of humanity.

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

Her face was fixed into a tense stare. "What?"

"It's a simple enough question," he murmured. "Claire, do you think I'm stupid?"

"I don't understand."

"You thought I wouldn't realize, didn't you? You thought I wouldn't figure it out?" His voice rose in volume. "Well, I did!" He smashed his fist into the table before smoothing back his hair with a sigh. "Claire, Claire, Claire…"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she insisted.

"I think you do." Icily, he picked up his bag and pulled a plastic bag weighted down by its contents out. Her stomach dropped into the soles of her feet. "Miss Powell was very sorry to have carried out your instructions."

"Teru…?"

Retrieved from the plastic bag, Mikami lifted in one hand a woman's severed head, the dead, bloodied face wearing such an expression of terror that Claire could not fully register it. He threw the head across the table and it landed with a thunk near her bowl of soup. Its long brown hair twisted in the cutlery and caught in the rhododendron. It was difficult to ascertain where the blood began and the red flowers started.

"Who is that?" Claire whispered.

"You don't know Rebecca Powell?" Mikami said, puzzled. He shrugged. "Ah, well. I know it was her going through my files."

"Oh my God…"

"Come now," he said reassuringly. He walked slowly over to her and embraced her so he could feel her shivering. "Claire, darling. I don't know why you're so fussed. She's nothing to do with you. Just someone who got in the way. A silly little girl who does not know boundaries. No need for you to be frightened."

There was every need. His hand, drenched in sticky blood all the way up to his elbow, was encircling her and trailing up and down her spine. The dead girl, Rebecca's, eyes were glowering at her from the table. Suddenly, the hand that had been tracing her spine was gripping her hair, and he was growling into her ear.

"Get a good look, sweetheart. This is what you're going to live with. We will make a team. We will take the world. We will marry. And I will use you up until there is nothing left of you but bone and marred, marked, poisonous flesh stained by my abuses."

"Then just kill me."

"Why, you–" His eyes drooped and he appeared to lose control of his tongue. "You… you…"

Taking the opportunity to pull her hair out of his fingers, she pushed him down with all of the strength she possessed and ran into the kitchen with him crawling after her. She promptly vomited into the sink to rid her body of all the sleeping tablets and grabbed a vegetable knife from the kitchen drawer. She pulled off her belt and bit down on it. Mikami was still groggily crawling across the floor towards her and reaching for her. Through the haze of his vision, he could make out her digging the knife into her own arm and screaming into the belt. When his eyes closed, he felt something hit his face – a blood-soaked tracker.

With tears streaming down her cheeks from the pain and her arm gushing blood, she created a bandage and tourniquet out of one her shirts. At this point, she knew she was unable to be traced. She spent her time with consideration, picking the lock to Mikami's study with a wire coat hanger. All the files and documents she could get onto a series of memory sticks in five minutes, she did, and all before she ran as fast as she could out of his house to freedom.

Blood pounding in her head and dripping onto the pavement behind her, she knew if she was stopped to go to hospital, Mikami would quickly locate her – and then, to spite her, keep her captive properly. Her muscles screamed for rest, deteriorated as they were by her formerly comatose state. This was the most strain they had endured since before Takada had drowned her, yet she refused to stop running.

She banged her fists on the gates of Wammy's like a maniac and shrieked for them to open the gates. Even then, she knew no one was listening, and spared a crimson-tinged glance for her fresh, self-inflicted wound. It was as though she had dipped her entire arm in blood, and her clothes were also soaked with it, both hers and Rebecca's, clinging to her together.

Her breath short and her will dissipating, she permitted her hands to slide from around the metal gates and her legs to collapse.

XXX

Tom did not know he was not the only one seeking a route back to Wammy's that day, and had he waited but fifteen minutes, he would have found Claire's corpse at the orphanage gates. He also would have perhaps saved Rebecca Powell's life. Immediately, he recognized the new Zapped member and scooped her up to fly her clumsily over the gates. After that, he ran towards the front door and yelled for urgent help.

Watari and one of the matrons were the first to arrive on scene and see their two battered young friends, one ripped apart by his own wings, the other gored by her own desperate actions. The matron's face was stricken with horror at the new development.

"I don't know what happened to her," Tom said as they carried her to the infirmary to contain her blood loss. "I just found her outside the gates."

"It's lucky you did," Watari told him. "Leave this to the infirmary staff now. They will help to stem the bleeding, and probably give her a transfusion. We pulled her blood type from her medical records."

"Who else is here?" Tom asked.

"Near, Matt, Mello, Lara, Matsuda and B," the older man explained, "although in varying states. This may be a lot to take in, but Phantom has crippled the team. Near is paralyzed below the waist; Mello's anger issues are at an all-time high; Lara might have brain damage and Matsuda is experiencing vivid night terrors. Matt pretends not to be fazed by it all, focused as he is on the work at hand, but I have known that lad since he was a boy, and when the House is at its most silent at night, I have heard cries from his room. He fears for their lives, and we are no closer to finding out the truth, or the culprit."

"I think I may have something to help."

Watari's eyes lit up with hope as Tom handed him the memory stick Rebecca had gotten from Mikami's computer.

"I know who's doing this; there's only one true culprit. Get the information to Near. The guy's name is Teru Mikami and he's predominantly a prosecutor for the law firm I work for. A girl in my building got these documents for me from his computer, and they should hopefully confirm my suspicions. Mikami's a twisted sort and if he's got the power I think he has, then God help us."

"Come with me."

Watari had Tom explain his theory to Near, who eagerly listened and continued to research Mikami in order to hack his computer for the rest of the files and toil through his work to gain enough evidence to hunt the man down and understand his methodology.

A few hours after Tom had arrived, he resolved to check in on Claire, who was asleep a blood transfusion. He figured that someone would have said something if she had died, giving him time to finally slow his brain down somewhat. She looked so tiny and breakable in the bed, so much sicker than most people he had ever seen in hospital. When he gave her hand a squeeze, her eyes opened in panic and tried to wriggle her way out of the bed.

"No, no, stay where you are, it's just me," Tom reassured her. "It's Tom."

"Am I dying?"

"You lost a lot of blood, but you're going to be okay once you've had some rest," he said. "What the hell were you thinking, cutting your arm open?"

"He put a tracker in there," she croaked, "so I couldn't go anywhere without him knowing. I cut it out."

"He? What? Who would put a tracker in you?" And yet, as soon as he asked, he knew the answer.

"Mikami."

"Why… did he keep you?" It seemed ludicrous, that out of all of them, she would be chosen to stay with Mikami himself. When he thought about it, there was some sense to it. She was easily the biggest outsider of the group. Her power was limited but she had a lot of knowledge she shouldn't have had. Besides, it would be a massive blow to the Zapped to lose somebody with such intimate knowledge of their inner workings and their powers. This was not the answer he received.

"He likes to break things."

Tom frowned, still unsure, and stood up to get a better look at her.

It was not just her arm that was wounded on a more thorough inspection – her whole body, or what he could see of it, was covered in marks. Hesitantly, he moved aside the collar of her shirt and what he saw confirmed his worst fears for the girl in front of him.

"That cunt," he hissed.

There was a repellent combination of hickeys and real bruises, a severe territorial scar. What disgusted Tom most beyond all measure of rationality was not the clawed red lines on Claire's arms or the cut on her bottom lip. It was the bite marks that had dug in so hard she had bled.

"I'm going to kill him," he snarled.

"Thomas McElroy," Claire sneered, "you can fucking well get in line."

Seems attention to this fic is long overdue.

'Cleithrophobia' is a fear of being trapped and 'amychophobia' is a fear of being scratched.

C.