As soon as we got off the bus at a corner and arrived at the warehouse (after introductions and some easy, small talk about the weather and such), Simon and I saw that the doors were wide open and that the streets were deserted. It made me uneasy because it was usually busy, even with a person or two here and there, but I knew that Simon and I had to get in there and help Gibbs, Tony, McGee and Ziva. It wasn't just because of my gut feeling either. Simon knew that nobody really had a chance in there.

However, I didn't know how to go about entering a warehouse that processed Haitian children for a sex trade. I mean, you didn't just walk in there and demand them to hand over the kids and agents and walk away with everything and them nothing. Somebody had to have a plan, which was why I turned to Simon.

"So, what's the plan now?" I asked him as we hid behind a dumpster next door, about where Gibbs was the day before. Hell, Simon seemed to have more of them up his sleeve than I did.

"I enter with you as a hostage," he answered easily enough. "You may be stuck in a room by yourself for a while, but it'll give me time to get the children out by myself. I can come back for you and the NCIS agents when I push the button and get people in there to move out. From there, he place can easily be blown up and nobody the worse for it."

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Are you joking? I thought that we were avoiding the whole 'Get the police here' scenario. It's enough that I started a fire in the ladies' bathroom and most likely will be caught for vandalism. Then, it'd be known that I did something stupid."

"Well, do you have any other plan, Lydia?"

I was silent. I didn't have anything.

"I thought so." Simon batted at my nose playfully. "Now, hand me your weapons, any and all that are visible. You can keep your knife and lighter with you."

My eyes widened.

"I saw you with your shirt up in that room," Simon confessed, his cheeks red with a little embarrassment. "I saw the lighter in your bra. I also saw the outline of a knife on you after we left."

"What, have a good time seeing someone else's tits for once?" I asked jokingly.

Simon waved his hand in disinterest. "I have no time for that, especially with one so beautiful and belonging to another, just like my wife. Now, give me your weapons."

Hesitating, I handed over my gun (he had the spray can still), knowing that all other weapons were out of the visible eye. Obeying him in all other things, I left my lighter and knife with me.

"Ready?" Simon then asked me, aware that I was shaking, scared that I was heading into danger once more.

I sighed, putting my hands behind my head as if caught by the wrong person already. "Well, I'm a prisoner. I'm heading into the web of deception once more. How do you think I feel?"

"You're about ready," Simon replied with that twinkle in his brown eyes, taking my own gun and pointing me in the back with it. Hands still in the air, I walked forward and towards the doors that led into the warehouse.

Except, of course, there was something weird about inside the warehouse. While the large, main room was deserted eerily enough, the sounds of children screaming under my feet were audible, but very far away. The hallways to my left and right were empty save for a guard with his gun on the right. NCIS agents were also nowhere to be seen (even the local reinforcements that Gibbs was promised), which was giving me chills up my spine.

Simon barked something in a different type of French to the guard on the right, who came over with his large gun. I just understood the basics of it (only knowing Spanish, Russian and German fluently, to be honest), but could hardly keep up with the two conversing. All I knew was that Simon asked his companion where he could put me, the agent-in-training that was once again caught snooping around. The guard only smiled and laughed, saying something to the effect that there was plenty of room below us. After all, the children were going to die soon anyway and I could join them.

Jesus, how offhand can you get?

For my benefit, Simon said in English, "I do want to put the girl with the children too, to make it easier to keep track of her. So, where are the children being held? Is it the basement or the room below the delousing station? I can't tell with all the screaming."

The guard scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he replied honestly in English too. "You can ask Jack in the interview room. He's doing some paperwork right now, so it's ok to bother him. I'm pretty sure he'd like the distraction, with all the other agents around here."

I didn't like the feeling of this at all. I wanted to tell Simon that going to this Jack person was heading right into danger, but he was pushing me towards this interview room, where the guards had been standing, with my gun firmly behind my back still. After all, I was still the hostage and he was the captor.

Down the deserted hallway Simon and I went until we reached another doorway, the dead end. Knocking, Simon was given permission (said in French) to come in. Then, we entered a large chamber of some sort, complete with warehouse piping and damp walls to make it feel right at home. The desk at the end in the center didn't even give the room a homey feel to it either.

"Yes? What is it, Simon?" the person named Jack asked as he pressed a red button on his desk.

Simon pushed me forward, causing me to land on my knees in front of the desk. "Sir, I've found this girl. She was watching our building across the street. She claims to be NCIS and nothing else. There's no identity on her and I've retrieved her gun. No other weapons on her."

Jack raised an eyebrow as a hidden door behind him opened, revealing another guard and Ziva.

"Really, Simon?" Jack asked as he folded his hands. "Really now? You see, we've already caught some NCIS hacks already, so I doubt she's the last. And, oddly enough, most of our staff has somehow…mysterious vanished. Maybe this girl can tell us where the hell they are before I shot this one's brains out?"

"Don't do it, Lydia, it's a trap!" Ziva yelled before her guard tried choking her with overly large hands. In response, Ziva (in her usual Mossad assassin style) elbowed back hard. When that didn't work (all muscle behind that lug), she kicked back, finally freeing herself and disabling the guard for a moment.

With one agent freed, Simon finally revealed his intentions as Ziva joined us in front of Jack.

"So, Austin and Traver were right," Jack said plainly, standing up and brandishing his own gun. "Well done, Simon, well done. I guess you can deal with the children after I set this place ablaze."

A second later, Jack raised his gun to aim and shot, but the three of us ducked and rolled as he shot numerous times, frustrated (and obviously without a lesson in shooting). Then, frustrated, Jack came up from around his desk and whistled, calling not just the guard who brought Ziva out, but two more goons with guns.

"Take care of them," Jack ordered them, walking and disappearing in the doorway before we could move against him. "I'll take care of the other agents."

Things One through Three all smiled. The one that held Ziva grinned the largest, pointing out the Mossad agent in particular. "That one's mine. Nobody get her."

"I'm not anybody's to get," Ziva replied, quickly taking out her knife from a hidden spot in her pant leg and aiming for the forehead of Thing One, hitting her would-be attacker true. Then, facing our other attackers as Thing One fell, she asked. "Now, would you care to try?"

The two of them, unafraid of Ziva and what she could do to them, only snickered. "That's just beginners' luck," Thing Two said. "Wanna try a second time?"

"Yeah, I would." I grinned back at them, taking out my own knife and aiming just like Ziva did. While mine whistled past Thing Two (still taunting us), it hit the other guard right in the arm.

Cursing under his breath, the wounded Thing Three raised his gun to me as he threw my knife aside. "Oh, you're gonna pay," he threatened before Simon shot him and then his friend in the forehead with speed.

Knowing that they all were dead, Simon went over and picked up both knives from the victims, cleaned them with the guards' shirts and handed them back to me and Ziva. As we put them away, he said, "There's no time. NCIS may have most of the workers out of here, but Jack has only to push one button and he can blow this place up."

"I'll get Tony, Gibbs and McGee," Ziva volunteered. "I can take care of the rest of them. You two get the children out of here. You are right. We don't have much time."

Agreeing quickly, we all parted. Simon then took me by the arm and ran with me out of the room and down the hallway we came from. Stopping for only a second to listen to the sound of screaming children to determine their destination, he turned to the other hallway and then right, leading me into the maze underground that was the Ashbury Park warehouse. Although I didn't have time to contemplate the agony that existed within these walls, I only saw enough to make me want to puke for a while and it wasn't just the dead, rotting bodies of children that got to me.

Finally, Simon found a stairwell at the other end of the warehouse, where the noise was the loudest. Sighing with relief, he let me go, jumping up and down on the wooden floor beneath us. I was confused, but was encouraged by Simon to do the same.

"They'll know somebody is here for them," he explained as he stopped. "They'll yell louder. We'll know for sure that it's them."

"Instead of creepy footsteps?" I asked, ignoring the order to jump.

"Exactly. And we need to hurry. We don't have much time, like Ziva said. I'm afraid Jack sent this place to blow up soon."

Stopping his jumping for a moment, Simon was reassured that this was where the children were. Satisfied, he went down the stairs to the source of the noises and picked the lock without asking for help from me, helpless on the top of the stairwell. Before I knew it, the door was opened and I was hearing the sounds of children screaming in relief. Little stomps of feet came up the stairs.

"Go, go, go!" I yelled as I saw each and every one come up, motioning that all of them leave quickly. When I tried looking at each, all I saw was abused children, bruised and some of them without limbs, limping to safety. None of them seemed older than ten, but all of them were malnourished and had been beaten and tortured at some time.

In Spanish (and I guess in French), Simon added and repeated (probably without brooding over the children), "Go! Get out of here quickly!"

It took a few minutes for the crowds to disperse and head to the exit without interruption from the guards, but when the last of the children were freed, Simon came up the stairs, relieved. He was then about to say something to me when the floor underneath us shook suddenly and violently. We both collapsed on top of each other (eventually, me on top of Simon), unable to move.

"The explosives are detonating earlier than I expected," Simon said gravely, pushing me off of him and then pulling me back up as he stood up. "Come on. You have to go."

"What do you mean, I have to go?" I asked, confused once more as Simon took me down the stairs into the dimly lit room where the children once were. Smelly and slimy, the room seemed like no safe place to me to take cover from the explosion about to happen.

Simon took me to the end of the room (helping me step over human waste and garbage), where he pushed aside an end table and rug and easily picked up a trapdoor. Below, there was nothing but darkness and fear, a small space in which to crawl and escape, but it was not something I'm sure the children picked up. Above our heads, there was always the unknown called death.

Without thinking (or so I thought), Simon pushed me into the small space, ensuring that I would fit. While the fall down was no problem, it was the space in which he stuck me in, which was tinier than I thought. I could barely stand up and there was barely any air left to breathe in. However, if I crawled to the end, there was an entranceway, a tunnel of some sort with some light at the sides to show it was there.

Simon saw that my eyes were already trained on the next doorway. "Go that way," he said as he threw down a piece of paper for me to bring. "Save yourself. There's only room for one person down there. I'll only take up the rest of the air."

I picked up the piece of paper he threw down. "What's this?"

"Something you'll need to find the last warehouse," Simon replied urgently. "Now, go. You'll be safe down there. It's already been proven to protect a person against bombs. Go! Now!"

Above me, the door was shut closed and surely, the rug and table put back on top of me. I was safe from the bombs as Simon sacrificed himself to, for sure. He knew that there was no time and that I had everything to live for and not him. One of us had to stop the Black Crusade from continuing its mission of misery and Simon knew that it had to be me. His life had already been forfeited.