Three-fifths of my story are up! In case you're finding any of this confusing, "this" signifies plain dialogue or spoken words, 'this' signifies Sands and the voice conversing, and this is regular thought. Oh, yes, I'm having second thoughts about the title. I kinda just thought this one up on the spot so I could post, and I think it's only mediocre. If anyone has suggestions, tell me pretty please! Proceed!

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III. Cell

Sands awoke to darkness, to which he had grown accustomed over the long months. All he ever saw anymore was darkness.

He supposed this was true on more than one level. When he was just a young man, he had accepted that which society – in an irritatingly politically correct manner – called "his illness," what the voice in his head constantly told him was the only thing keeping him alive. Hell, he sometimes didn't know what to call it. All he knew was that it was as natural to him as breathing – as natural as shooting.

Sands tended to see the darker side of people as well. It was every fucker for himself, survival of the fittest. No one really cared for the troubles of any other poor schmuck. The most important thing was to live, to make it to the next day. Everyone who claimed they wanted to help had some ulterior motive to screw you over one way or the other. Ever since he was a boy he had firmly believed this, and the belief had been reinforced from within and without.

Which was why Sands had been so thrown – no, baffled – by the Chicle boy's willingness to help a man with blood pouring down his face, who had just a few days before told him to fuck off. He'd even said "I don't ever want to see you again." Well, alert the irony gods, he hadn't. The kid had been willing to aid Sands in murder, had saved his life even after seeing him shoot people down. Sands was fully aware that he was not a good person by any means... but the kid didn't know that. The only thing the kid knew was that Sands killed the bad cartel men, and that made him okay.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Sands thought wryly.

That was another doctrine Sands had lived by for so many years, in the States and in Mexico. Setting things up and watching them fall. Baiting, setting traps, double-crossing. It was what he loved, what he lived for. But he hoped the kid wasn't going to hold to that lovely little adage, because it had ended up getting Sands up shit's creek without a paddle.

'You're not careful, you're gonna start caring about that kid,' he was informed lazily.

'I do not,' Sands answered quickly. That was the key to winning these little arguments, to think quickly. Think on your feet. That was the trick. 'It's not like he matters anymore.'

'Like hell you don't,' the voice said, responding to Sands' first statement and ignoring the second. 'If you don't, then why did you tell him to run? Why didn't you shoot him too?'

'He saved my goddamn life,' Sands countered.

'He saw you at your weakest.'

'He was a fucking kid!' he protested. So what if he did like the boy a little; he was a good kid. No reason to kill a child. Not that day, not most days.

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"This is the one," said the young guard, whose ID tags proclaimed him to be one Matthew Evans. He stopped in front of a door, and Christine McCaslin, thirty-eight year old agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, stopped too. A troupe of armed guards halted behind them. She tucked a lock of brown hair behind her ear, partially out of the desire to look neat but mostly from nervousness. She had never been really comfortable in these crumbling Mexican buildings, not even with her badge, not even with a gun or two. Most of the decaying edificios had been cartel-owned at one point or another, and they still held an ominous tang of pain about them, a residue of death.

This particular building had been seized by the government after the destruction of the Barillo cartel in the coup. It had presumably been used to hold, interrogate, and torture prisoners, which certainly explained the windowless, concrete cells and the stubborn bloodstains on the floor that no amount of mopping or scouring could remove.

"This is where Agent Sands is being held?" she asked, just for clarification. Evans nodded as Christine surveyed the door to the cell in distaste. It was steel, thick steel, with a little window that slid open and shut so prisoners could be observed.

"Is he dangerous?" she asked. A dumb question under any other circumstances; of course he was dangerous. He was Sheldon Jeffrey Sands, a legend in two countries. But now he was powerless, locked within the concrete cell.

"Shouldn't be," he responded. "We've got him in a jacket, he's unarmed. All he's done is sit in the corner. Mutters to himself sometimes. He's yelled out once or twice. There's a camera in there, though. He won't be able to hurt you."

"How badly injured is he?"

Evans shrugged. "From what I know, they had to shoot him up pretty bad. Arms, legs, shoulders. The doctors treated them but I doubt he's got much mobility."

Christine gently slid the little window open and looked in through a plate of Plexiglas at the prisoner of the CIA. He was indeed in the corner, but looking quite calm in his sunglasses, legs stretched out and crossed before him, his head tilted back against the wall against which he was leaning.

She closed the sliding window and tucked her hair back again. "Alright. Let me in, then."

Evans stepped forward and undid several locks and a massive steel bolt, also reopening the small window. "So we can watch, in case anything goes wrong."

She stopped him just before he pulled the heavy door open. "Bolt the door behind me," she said. "Keep the guards at the ready."

"But do you want one of us to go in with you? Just in case?"

Christine shook her head and patted the gun holstered at her right hip. "Thanks, but I don't think that will be necessary. I'll knock when I want out. Just check through the window to make sure everything's okay before you open the door." She had only seen Sands once at a meeting, but she had heard stories of how he'd made impossible escapes, never leaving any survivors.

He nodded again and pulled the door open. Christine took a deep breath, tucked her hair back one last time, and stepped in.

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Spoofmaster-- Thanks for reviewing! I don't show my email either, mostly because I don't want spam. Glad you liked chapter 2, this one's not nearly as violent, but we'll get there .... ;)