The silence around James Kent's bed was enough to allow a pin to drop. Then Mr. Kent Senior exploded loudly enough to disrupt one feeding, drop a bedpan, and leave another patient so agitated they had to strap him down to the bed.

"A nurse! A nurse!" Mr. Kent railed, attracting any attention not already directed to the odd conclave around the bed. "Why not a prostitute? Do you realize what you've done? Breaking off your engagement to propose to a nurse? Are you a fool as well as an invalid?"

"I'm following my heart." James shifted in place, his eyes flicking toward Nurse Stuart, who remained at the other end of the ward. "She saved my life and I… I feel something for her father."

He turned to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. "Something, I'm sorry to say, I've never felt for Anna. And something I very much doubt she felt for me. Or feels for me. We were never… We were only ever good friends and we wanted to make something of that but what I feel for Ivy… For Nurse Stuart," James stopped, lost for words before his back straightened. "I love Nurse Stuart in a way I've never loved Anna. In a way I know she never loved me."

"Well we'll never know since the feral bitch's gone and run amuck again." Mr. Kent spluttered and threw his hands up in the air before scoffing. "At least with the moor child you had a chance at position and standing. An opportunity to use the interest her story brought to wiggle into ballrooms and bank accounts. Now you'll experience nothing but derision and no one'll invite you and your hospital slut to anything. You're done for with this decision. Do you understand? Done."

His fist closed near James's face and he shook it there. "We were so close to having it all son. So close to twisting it all to our advantage but you… You want to follow your heart. You've ruined us with this decision, you realize that yes? You stupid boy. And even stupider girl if she's already spread her legs for you in this very bed where-"

"Mr. Kent, I believe you should consider not speaking further." John stepped forward, his hand going to the other man's chest to immediately stop any thought of argument while also pushing him back from striking distance of James. "You've said more than your piece and now it's time to walk away."

"And who are you to-"

"I said you've said enough." He held the man's eyes with his until the red changed to a pale white in the man's face. "Now Mr. Smith here is too dignified a gentleman to challenge you for your slander of his daughter and he's a good man for it. And your son's too respectful to call you a fool to your face for what you've said to him. And that nurse you've insulted is too gentle a soul to spit in your face like you deserve for you besmirching her honor. So I'd suggest you take the good fortune they've all deigned to give you and leave with the tatters of your dignity."

"Tatters of my-"

"There's a hope, slim though it is, that you can mend the rifts you've made here in anger and that only happens if you leave. If not, all those hopes will shatter and you'll only have yourself to blame for what happens next." John removed his hand, still watching Mr. Kent. "It's your choice."

"Or what?" Mr. Kent risked a sneer, "You'll challenge me?"

"I'm very sure it wouldn't be much of a challenge on my part." John folded his arms over his chest. "Now, your son's still injured and requires attention. That means rest and you should leave him to it."

"He's cancelled an important engagement."

"That's his affair, not yours." John looked at James, who nodded. "And Ms. Smith'll be just fine with what he'll tell her when she's found. There'll be no hard feelings or grievances between the two parties. Let them settle this between themselves like the adults they are."

"Do you speak for them now?"

"Better me for them than my fist for me." John pointed to the entrance. "There's the door. Don't let it smack your ass on the way out before I've a chance to do it myself."

Mr. Kent only blustered but he let in a minute, storming from the room with what remained of his dignity. It left the rest of them standing awkwardly around James's bed until Talbot cleared his throat. "John here is right, Mr. Kent the younger needs his rest and we're disturbing him."

They shuffled away, John catching sight of Nurse Stuart carefully wending her way to the now empty space, and took up a corner where they hoped to escape the attentions of the others in the ward. Unfortunately for John, that left him as the subject of inquiry. And the focus of Mr. and Mrs. Smith's curious glances.

"I think more than a little gratitude is in order." Mr. Smith extended his hand and John shook it. "Although I'm still confused as to how you know James or Anna. You're not one of their friends are you?"

"Not quite how I'd describe myself, no." John shifted in place and tried to clear his throat. "I met Anna while she was… Taken."

Mrs. Smith covered her mouth as Mr. Smith turned as white as James's bedsheets. "You were… You were there?"

"I was." John took a breath. "I wasn't one of her captors, if that's what's worrying either of you. I've never harmed Anna nor could I ever. I love her."

"You've just told us that you were there and we're-"

"To trust him, yes." Talbot inserted himself between John and Mr. Smith. "What John here is saying is he was a captive too."

"How do you know? And, for that matter, who are you?" Mr. Smith blustered in confusion. "Where are all these people popping from?"

"I trained Anna, after her… incident in the park, all those years ago." Talbot waited but neither Mr. or Mrs. Smith had a better reaction than the ones painted in the shock on their faces. "Very well. I also know a bit about where Anna was taken and by whom."

"How?"

"My…" Talbot shook his head and waved his hand as if to wipe away the conversation. "This isn't the time nor the place for the very long and arduous conversation you're both owed about all of this."

"And when, sir, would you say that is?" Mrs. Smith finally spoke and John turned to her before glancing toward Talbot. "Before or after we wait another year to find out that our daughter is alive or dead?"

"Much sooner than that." Talbot pointed to John. "Due to this man's knowledge I can finally find the place were Anna was taken. Where Anna is, more than likely, now. With him I can rescue her."

Mrs. Smith turned to John, "Are you going to help rescue my daughter?"

"Yes ma'am." John took her hand. "I was the one who helped her get away last time and I'll bring her home again. No matter what it takes I'll bring her back to you. I swear it on my life."

"What about on her life?" Mr. Smith's comment drew their attention and he pointed at John. "You said you love her and I do believe the sincerity in your voice. But what if she doesn't love you? Would you do the same for her is she didn't feel the same way for you that you obviously do for her?"

"I wouldn't do your daughter, or yourselves, the disservice of leaving her on that island because my feelings were injured in the process." John held their focus. "Whether Anna returns my affections or not, I'll bring her back to you because of how I feel. If she wants me removed from her life, for any reason, she only has to say so and I'll be gone."

"That's your word on the matter?" Mr. Smith's eyes narrowed. "If she wanted to try and win James back from his nurse or even… Take this man here, you'd step aside at her whim?"

"My heart's always been Anna's. That means her wish is my command. Even if that wish is for someone other than me." John stood taller. "Now, please go home. Try to find some peace. And know that we'll bring Anna back to you."

Mr. and Mrs. Smith looked at one another before Mrs. Smith took his hand. "Come dear. There's nothing else we can do."

"You trust them to do this?"

"What choice do we have?" Mrs. Smith gestured toward John and Talbot. "They're the only hope we have of finding Anna. I can't… I can't live for another year of my life wondering if she's ever coming home. I just… I can't."

Mr. Smith wrapped his arm around his wife and nodded. "Alright dear. We'll go home and wait." He turned to John and Talbot. "But the first news you have, bring it to us and don't be shy about it. We need to know everything, even if it's news that she's… Even if…"

He stopped himself, almost choking on whatever words he could not bring himself to say. John glanced at Talbot before extending his hand to Mr. Smith. "I promise that we'll do all in our power to bring Anna back to you. Go home and try to find some rest there while we do what we can. There's nothing else for you to do but wait… As difficult as I know that will be."

"There is nothing else for us to do." Mr. Smith guided his wife out of the ward and John fully turned to Talbot.

"I think it's time we put some of our knowledge to use and actually helped those people."

"Finally, someone speaking sense." Talbot pointed toward the door and they left the ward, avoiding nurses, doctors, and patients on their way to the street. "Although I'm a little curious… Haven't I seen you before?"

"If you paid attention you'd have seen me quite a few times." John opened the door to Talbot's carriage and waved at the driver. "I've been following you."

"Following me?" Talbot narrowed his eyes and climbed into the carriage, John keeping close behind him. "Why?"

"To find out what you know about Green and his organization." John raised an eyebrow and pointed toward the roof of the carriage. "Are you going to tell him where to go or should I?"

"You're cheeky." Talbot rapped his knuckles against the roof and the carriage jerked to start, pulling away from the hospital. "Is that what Anna sees in you?"

"We share a few other things but my cheekiness isn't the one that helped us get on, if that's what you're asking."

"It's not, actually." Talbot studied him, "How'd you get on that island in the first place? You're not exactly the type."

"How'd you mean?"

"You're big, for a start. Most of the missing individuals were smaller. The kind who slip between the cracks and vanish because no one suspects them."

"It was a good system." John ground his teeth a second. "My story's a little more… Victim of unfortunate circumstance, not the object of unfortunate circumstance. If that makes sense."

"More of a 'wrong place, wrong time', fiasco then?"

"That's it." John let out a sigh. "My father passed and my mother took to his fishing business. I worked with her and one day we made the mistake of taking our boat a little farther out into the North Sea than we should. A storm blows in and we seek an island for shelter instead of capsizing. As was our luck on that particular day, we happen on the island Green Senior took as his training facility."

"I'll put out there, as a guess, that he didn't exactly believe that you'd 'keep it all to yourselves and never tell anyone what you saw', yes?"

"He saw value in what we knew about boats and sailing. Told us there'd be a price for our lives and we could work ourselves to freedom." John snorted, "It's funny what you'll convince yourself if true because you want it to be so."

"Your indentured servitude not what you expected?"

"Not at all. My mother turned into a domestic until she got too sick to work. Then I had to manage her duties and my own just to get the dregs of medicine to treat her condition." John tugged at his fingers before rubbing over the white scars on his hands. "She spent her last months in the cabin of our boat. Died there in the middle of the night as she fought to breathe and suffocated as her lungs proved inefficient for the task of life."

Talbot was silent a moment. "I'll not do you the disservice of offering my sympathies when I don't think that's what you want from me."

"The reality, Mr. Talbot, is that what I want from you isn't something you can give me." John sat back. "From the information I've gathered, through the training I picked up in the same crucible that Anna experienced, you're trying to fix a fault in your biology… Of sorts."

"If you're making accusations about the weight of this sin being mine because it was my father's…" Talbot nodded, "What can I do about all this to make it right for you, Mr. John?"

"It's Bates, Mr. Talbot. John Bates." He extended his hand, "We've not been properly introduced and I think we need to find a new foot on which to start."

"You must read an awful lot." Talbot shook John's hand. "Did you find much time for that during your incarceration?"

"I don't sleep well. Something people like me suffer from in general." John rolled his shoulders back as they separated. "But that's not the point."

"Then please," Talbot spread his hands, "We'll stop playing games and get there faster if you're willing to speak."

"I'm suggesting that I've got the missing pieces you need to get the help we'd need to storm that island."

"And here I was thinking you were going to suggest that the two of us, alone, would prove efficient commandos for this operation."

"I'm capable but not mad." John shook his head. "No, the information I've got for you was pieced together over the course of my captivity. From things Green Senior said and things he had his agents do."

"Like what?"

"He never attacked British Government strongholds. All of his orders were to immobilize foreign governments." John shrugged, "A man who believes he's been separated from his government would tend to lash out like a wounded animal against those he felt wronged him."

"That would suggest that he thought he was still an agent of the Empire." Talbot rubbed at the opposite side of his face with a hand. "What's your proof?"

"There was a man who owned a very nice boat… More of a yacht, really, who would make stops once a month every year until Green Senior's death."

"And now?"

"He's made a few stops but not as many under Green's reign." John tried to bite down on his smile. "He doesn't trust Green, this man, and given the inability of Green to control his father's empire it makes sense to doubt his capacity to serve."

"Who is he?"

"He's who I've been following while I've been in London. He's one of the people Green set to meet with when he got here to clean up the results of Braithwaite's mess."

Talbot raised an eyebrow, "A mess I'm sure did nothing to prove Green's prowess in a field he's quickly losing."

"Exactly. It's all made more complicated by the spread of media presence. The more newspapers and reporters who exist the more chance that people start piecing these things together. That's not the kind of attention the government needs when tensions are rising elsewhere in Europe."

"United front and all that?" John nodded and Talbot pulled at his chin before glancing out the window of the carriage. "Who is this man?"

"The one Green's met with?" John shook his head. "I've not caught his name. He's one of the suited ghosts that roam the hallways and corridors of power around your building but no one's addressed him by anything less than 'sir'."

"That could be a few people in my particular corridor of power." Talbot put his hand on the door and pushed out, leading John to the street. "If he's got anything to do with this then we need to find him. He's the key to what's keeping the Navy and the Coast Guard from finding that island."

"If he thinks it's been compromised then-"

"Then they're a liability, I know." Talbot dug into his pocket to pay the driver and motioned John to follow him into an alley between the large government building milling with those in suits of the same quality or finer than Talbot's. "But if we make him a liability to Green then he's going to eliminate the threat."

"You want to use this man as bait?" Talbot nodded and John flexed his jaw before shaking his head. "We'd need a fool proof plan to get him frightened enough to help us and then tell us everything. It'd ruin his career, if he even lives long enough to tell us anything."

"You were the one who told me there was a man like him."

"I didn't expect you'd immediately turn to subterfuge as a solution to the problem." John scoffed, "My fault, I guess, for not suspecting exactly that from the kind of man you are."

"You don't know the kind of man I am, Mr. Bates."

"You don't think Anna told me what you did?" John waited but Talbot dropped his eyes. "I understand your motivations, disturbed though they were, but I can't say I stand by them. And I don't work on that level."

"No, neither of you do, and there's a bit to be comprehended when you've done what I've done and seen what I've seen." Talbot raised his eyes to meet John's. "But I think there's a way to kill two birds with one stone in this, if you're willing."

"How?"

"You said that Green would eliminate the threat, if he saw one, and that this man needs to be frightened enough to help us. Why not create the illusion of one to encourage the other?"

"How so?"

"There's an agent of Green's, the one causing all the problems lately, who could be very useful as the evidence we need against this man to force his hand."

"Braithwaite?" John shook his head. "She went back to the island with Green. He'll have her put under again until he's sure she's back to being his creature."

"You're sure?"

"It's his style since he could never instill the kind of fear and loyalty his father did." John shuddered, "At least Green Senior had an efficient system. He was a horribly brutal man but he knew what he was about. He knew how to do the job set to him by his government. Green's a loose canon."

"Then what are the chances he'd jump the gun on his loyal assassin's reprograming to send her to get rid of a threat?" Talbot motioned for John to follow him to a back door and they took a series of back stairs until they reached his office. "Mr. Bates, I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Gregson. He's Anna's employer and one of the finest newspaper men I've ever met."

John shook hands with the man who smiled with all the genuine sincerity of an honest man. "It's an unexpected pleasure to meet you."

"And you." Gregson took his hand back. "If I'd known Ms. Smith had such illustriously swashbuckling friends in her midst I'd have insisted on doing portraits of them for her stories. You're just the thing for them."

"Your compliment is beyond flattering, sir." John took a seat, eyeing Gregson before turning to Talbot. "And what's a newspaper man going to do to help us?"

"He's going to publish the story and get everyone up in arms about it."

John blinked at both men before addressing Gregson. "You're going to publish a story, without evidence, just to set a trap here?"

"You're evidence, aren't you?" Gregson pointed at John and then shrugged. "And I would think that poor boy barely recovering in hospital is proof that there is definitely more going on here than whatever rumors are circling the mill."

"Mr. Bates," Gregson edged forward on his chair, "Too much has happened lately, starting with Ms. Smith's abduction ten years ago, to let any of this lie. Then it was a story that turned into an urban legend. And be that as it may, it was horrible. It almost destroyed her life and that of her family. Then there she was, on the cusp of happiness, to only watch her life turned upside down again?"

John nodded, "I'm aware of the greatness of Ms. Smith's misfortunes, Mr. Gregson. Having endured more than a few of them myself, I'm uniquely qualified to judge the horrors of her situation."

"Then you're the one I'll use as the source for all of this." Gregson pointed at Talbot. "And he'll be the man who gets this little ember to lit the appropriate fires under the appropriate asses, if that's something I can say."

"Don't censor yourself on my account." Talbot leaned on the edge of his desk and looked at John. "If you'll show me the man here responsible for keeping this… Black book operation going then we'll know just where to set the target Green's Ms. Braithwaite needs. We'll wait, catch her, entrap him, and then get those currently trapped to safety."

"In this plan of yours," John adjusted in his chair to keep both Talbot and Gregson in view. "What is your acceptable rate for casualties? Because if any piece of this plans falls apart, we'll all pay the price for it."

"It won't fail."

"I'm sure that's what your father said when he created all this." John waited, watching the twitch in Talbot's jaw. "You're playing at this and you don't even know what you're playing for."

"And you do?"

"Better than you, I'd hazard." John sighed, turning to Gregson. "What do you plan on doing with what you publish? What's your play in all this?"

"Honestly?" Gregson shrugged and took a breath. "I'm hoping to cover this entire affair, from start to finish."

"Including the ridiculous notion that Mr. Talbot Sr. had in regards to what he could do with the desperate and forgotten of the streets?"

"All of it." Gregson pointed at Talbot. "We're hoping that, at the very least, the truth will out."

"These are bound to be protected secrets. The British government isn't known for being kind to those who make them look like fools." John looked between the two men. "Are you ready for the results of that decision?"

"Better than you know." Talbot reached back and grabbed a piece of paper from his desk to hand to John. "That's my ultimatum. That's what I'll risk to get this all done and dusted."

"And put nicely to bed so you take the credit for sorting it?" John handed the paper back. "Excuse me for being dubious about your intentions."

"It's fair." Talbot's face turned solemn. "I'm know what I've done."

"And what you'll be doing if you go down this road?" John waited, "There are lives at stake and you're playing as if you've already won the game."

"It's all played in the mind first, Mr. Bates."

"And that's why the government should never be allowed to do anything." John let out a sigh, shaking his head before fully facing Gregson. "Where do I start on this horrible voyage, Mr. Gregson? What do you need to know first?"

Gregson snatched a pencil and flipped the top of his notebook back. "Wherever you decide you need to begin, Mr. Bates. We'll start there and see where this all leads us."