Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, except for the ones I've made up myself.

Family Blood

Chapter 6: The Truth Hurts

A young man followed Dr. Nathan Chilton to the dungeons below. He wasn't looking forward to this at all. But he had no choice. He was forced into doing this by his superiors.

"Do you know how long you'll be?" Chilton asked him.

The young man shrugged. "However long it takes I guess." He responded while running a hand nervously through his short dirty blonde hair. "It shouldn't be long if she decides to cooperate. If not, it may be a while."

Chilton didn't seem to be too interested. Instead he hurried along to the basement, acting like he'd rather be somewhere else. "Don't expect her to cooperate," he muttered. "That bitch may be pleasing to the eye, but after you talk to her you'll want to rip out that tongue of hers and infuse that mask onto her face for all eternity."

The man shook his head. He defiantly sensed some hostility towards the young woman from Chilton.

"Her cell's down there," Chilton pointed down the hallway. "I assume that you know the rules?"

The other man nodded. "Yes, Agent Parker had explained them to me back at Quantico. Thanks."

Chilton nodded before heading back upstairs to his office, leaving the man alone with the orderly and two guards. He nodded a brief hello to them before making his way down the hallway of cells.

'Stay down the middle,' he mentally reminded himself while trying hard not to look into the other cells around him. He sped up his pace slightly, eager to get this over with. He tightly held onto the file in his hand, determined not to drop it down here. 

He finally reached her cell. She was sitting on the cot, knees held up to her chest, staring at the wall beside her. The first thing that really stuck out for him was the large scar on her right cheek. The next thing was her depressing demeanor.

He cleared his throat, a little reluctant to speak. "Jadis Lecter?"

She looked at him, her haunting maroon eyes briefly scanning over him and finally coming to rest on his face. "Yeah?" she asked, her voice quiet and emotionless.

"Jadis Lecter, I'm Special Agent Matthew Krendler. May I speak with you?"

He watched as she tilted her head, an action eerily similar to her father. Matthew repressed a shudder.

"Krendler?" Jadis inquired. "As in Paul Krendler?"

Matthew nodded. "That's right. Paul was my older brother."

Jadis raised an eyebrow. "Is a convention of my father's victim's relatives in town this week or something? First Chilton and now you." She shook her head. "Now we just need Mason Verger's cousin and Raspail's mother and we'll be all set." She rolled her eyes as she stood up to face him eye to eye.

She looked over Matthew again. He seemed to be about her age, in the late twenties. He stood almost two inches taller than her. Surprisingly though, he bore very little resemblance to his deceased older brother, both in his appearance and in his attitude. Jadis once had the displeasure of meeting Paul Krendler when she was still in training. He was giving a speech to her class at Quantico about the Justice Department and what they do. She forced back a yawn at the memory of that monotonous noise that was supposed to be a speech. She could have sworn that she had fallen asleep in the middle of it. Afterwards she had briefly met him as he was chatting with the students. All she really remembered was that Paul's eyes were anywhere on her but her face. She shuddered inwardly at the memory.

Matthew reluctantly decided to speak again. "Miss. Lecter," he said, not sure of what to call her by. "The FBI would like your help."

Jadis raised an eyebrow. "I'm not going to be bait for catching Clarice and my father, Krendler."

He shook his head. "No, not at all. It concerns Richard Silversted." He put the file into the carrier and sent it through to her. "In exchange for your help in taking him down, we'll let you out of here forever. Right now you're only in here because of your father, you know. Help us, and we'll help you. What do you say?"

Jadis didn't even look at the file yet. She remained extremely skeptical of the offer. 'There's no way in hell the Feds would let me out off the hook,' she thought to herself.

"And if I disagree?" she asked him.

Krendler sighed. "If you disagree, you'll be spending a long time down here. It would be in your best interest to take the offer."

Unknown to him, Jadis was mentally calculating how long it would take Dr. Lecter and Clarice to get her out of here. She didn't want to see Silversted behind bars, she wanted to kill him herself. Maybe even let her father throw a little dinner party afterwards also. On top of that, she defiantly didn't trust the FBI to just let her go.

Matthew shifted from one foot to the other nervously. Her haunting maroon eyes gave him the creeps whenever she looked at him. In the corner of his mind he wondered what his brother would do in his position.

'Probably drool over her legs and come on to her,' he thought bitterly. Matthew had always disapproved of his older brother's attitudes towards women, especially after the way he had treated his own wife. Because of the tarnished image Paul had provided, Matthew had been determined to be completely opposite to him in every way. It was the reason why he had decided to go into Behavioral Sciences instead of Justice Department where Paul used to work.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Matthew took the opportunity to speak again. "At least have a look at the file Lecter. I'll come back later to hear your decision."

As he turned to walk away, Jadis' voice stopped him. "One more thing, Krendler."

Matthew closed his eyes and sighed. He just wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Turning to face the young woman once more, he swallowed down the urge to just ignore her and go home.

Jadis was glad when he decided to listen to her. There was a question that had been bugging her ever since this interview started. "How do you feel about you brother's demise, Agent Krendler?" she asked.

Matthew blinked in surprise. He wasn't prepared for that. "Well," he managed to stutter out. "I obviously feel a little saddened about it..."

"A little?" Jadis tilted her head again, causing her resemblance to her father to really stand out.

Matthew realized what he had just revealed to her. He sighed before speaking again. "Paul and I never really got along. There was always some tension between us I guess you could say. The truth is," he shook his head, "I was almost relieved when I found out he had been killed." He found it hard to admit the truth, it had sounded so evil to his ears.

Jadis seemed to be amused. "Relieved? Matthew," she called him by his first name, "trust me, a lot of people were relieved when Paul had died. I was unfortunate enough to have met him once before he was killed. In my humble opinion, he had it coming." She gave him a surprisingly kind smile. "So don't feel bad about your feelings towards him. I most certainly wouldn't."

Matthew slowly backed away, suddenly feeling even more uncomfortable. "I have to go now Lecter," he told her. "I'll be back later to hear your answer."

With that, he more or less jogged down the corridor and out of the dungeons, just wanting to get out of there.

Jadis grinned. 'That was fun,' she thought to herself. 'Who would have thought that the truth could scare people so badly?'

Sitting back down on the cot, she eyed the file Matthew had sent through to her, with no intention of looking at it.

*********************

Later that day a plain white van sat a little ways away from where Jadis was being kept. Inside the vehicle Clarice and Dr. Lecter went over their plans one last time before putting them into action.

Checking her trusty gun, Clarice stole a glance over to the old building. "I never thought that I would be back here again," she commented.

Dr. Lecter nodded. "Likewise," he agreed. Looking over at her, he asked, "Are you sure that you can remember your way around inside there?"

Clarice grinned. "It's kinda hard to forget Hannibal. You of all people should know that."

"Touché," he remarked.

A few minutes were spent in silence as Dr. Lecter drove the van a little farther down the street, nearer to the entrance of the hospital. Stopping about a building away from the tall building, he looked over to Clarice once again. "Ready?" he simply asked her.

Clarice looked over to him. "Ready as I'll ever be," she responded.

The two exited the van and, at a steady pace, made their way to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.