Burn

by HoistTheColours

It was a pleasure to burn.

9. Cauterize lV

Cauterize - Part lV

You sliced me loose

and said it was

creation.

I could feel the knife.

–Margaret Atwood

*Please see the content warnings at the end of the chapter or check my tags on AO3 prior to reading for potential trigger warnings. This chapter is extremely heavy. Taylor is still underage.

This can't be real. This can't be real.

It's the only thought tearing through her brain as a panicked scream is ripped from the confines of her throat.

"Ben—help me!"

Some of the men laugh when she calls out for him. Her heart throbs as she thrashes to get away, beating so hard and so fast it feels like it's going to explode. She fights the man holding her with everything she's got, kicking and scratching and flailing. She feels a rabid, primordial rage clawing its way out of her as she fights—like she's a wild animal, something on the precipice of extinction. The last of her kind. She knows she has to get away, that she has to escape.

She has to survive.

When she sinks her teeth into the fleshy meat of the man's sweaty forearm, he releases her with a muffled shout.

The moment he does, she falls to the ground on hands and knees, her legs giving out. He's on her again before she can even blink, shoving her face-down into the gravel, snarling above her as he straddles the back of her thighs, rips her arms behind her back. A thick, angry plume of dust from the orange gravel swirls up around them from the impact of their bodies, and the wind is knocked straight out of her when she goes down. She gasps uselessly, like a fish out of water, her eyes bugging in her desperate need for oxygen. Something plastic tightens around her left wrist and her cast, maybe a zip tie. As the world around her spins and blurs, sharp gravel digs into the side of her face, the taste of sand and rocks filling her mouth.

She's rocketed back to a memory that's excruciatingly familiar—when Nathan had shoved her down onto the cracked, broken concrete, knocking the wind out of her. The way she'd torn open the side of her face, and his weight on her back, holding her down.

She's horrified at the memory, but she still can't breathe. Can't do anything but lie there, bug-eyed and helpless.

"Aren't you a little fighter," the man laughs, panting from their struggle. Some of the dust is starting to clear, and she looks up through blurry eyes to see the other men standing there in a half-moon circle, staring at her.

"Don't hurt her!"

Ben.

She blinks, and a moment later she hears shoes shifting in the gravel—sounds of a scuffle—but all she is conscious of is her own lack of oxygen, how she can't suck in any air.

Tears are streaming down her cheeks when she's yanked up from the ground, her vision swimming, dirt caked to the side of her face and the front of her clothes. It feels like it takes forever for her breath to return, and when it does she inhales it desperately, taking shuddering, gasping breaths, folded in on herself, the man's arm around her middle the only thing supporting her and keeping her from collapsing back to the ground.

"Ben," she rasps, tears sliding down her face. She tries to lift her head, but has to settle instead for looking up, from beneath her brows. Her eyes widen when she sees that he's being held back by two men on either side of him.

"Ben isn't going to save you," the man behind her says, smelling so strongly of cigarette smoke that it makes her throat burn. He pulls her back against him, bracing his forearm just beneath her collarbones to keep her upright. Her arms are already aching where they're trapped behind her back. "In fact, why doesn't Ben tell you exactly what he does to little girls like you."

"You don't have to be so fucking rough with her," Ben snaps, trying to get to her. She watches him twist his shoulders in an attempt to get free, but the men on either side of him only tighten their grip on his upper arms, forcing him back.

One of the men next to him laughs. "Yeah, big boy? And what the fuck are you gonna do about it?" he snorts, full of derision. "You don't get to wash your hands of this just because you have a crush. Did you fuck her already, huh? Is that it? Had to get a little piece of that for yourself first before you passed her on?"

"Fuck you!" Ben snarls. He tries to fight out of their grip with another hard jerk of his shoulders, and he's not easily subdued. Another man ends up having to step in, and she watches the ensuing fight while her heartbeat throbs inside her ears and her mind races.

"Ben!" she cries. "What are they talking about?"

Ben stops struggling long enough to look at her, his expression pained. His black hair all slicked to his forehead, brows pulled together as he pants, breathless from his earlier struggle. She only then notices the sky behind him darkening, the threat of an impending storm.

"Taylor, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry—God." He swallows, catching his breath and then looking away for a moment, flanked by three men, the one behind him gripping a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back so his throat is exposed. He has to look down the long slope of his nose to see her. It frightens her to see him like this, looking so pitiful. So afraid. "I didn't—I didn't want to do this," he says, "I mean… I meant, once I got to know you—like, really know you…" he trails off, unable to finish. "—And when you told me about your uncle and you cried, I thought… I didn't want to do it anymore. But I couldn't stop it, and I'm sorry—I'm so fucking sorry."

Taylor's mouth parts at his confession, her stomach twisting into a confusing maze of water-logged knots that makes her feel both too full and empty at the same time. She doesn't understand what he means. He had been using her this whole time?

She remembers then—with startling clarity—the words of his roommate the night that Ben had taken her to his apartment. You must be one of the new ones, he'd said, and then, hey, Ben, you actually gonna keep this one around?

It all makes horrifying sense, suddenly. This is where Ben had intended to bring her the night of the car crash, wasn't it? This had been his plan from the very beginning.

"Ben's our little delivery boy," the man holding her says, tightening his grip, more than happy to fill in the blanks for her. "Gets pretty girls like you all loaded up and ready for us to take to the big boss."

Taylor gapes at Ben, her breathing shallow, her heart feeling like it wants to explode out of her chest, one sharp drumbeat to end it all, and then a bloodbath of fireworks, all the pieces of her heart raining down on them.

He was just using her this whole time. Preparing her for the big sell-off. He had lied to her—pretended to be her friend.

She looks at him, at how pathetic and small he looks, even while he's being held back by three men. She stares at him as he pleads at her with his eyes, begging her for forgiveness, and now her heart feels like it's been cracked in two, like he's just shoved a stake right down the middle of it, and it hurts. It fucking hurts. How many times will she have to endure a betrayal like this? How many times does she have to have her heart cracked open before it can't be cracked open any more?

"Ben," she cries, knowing she sounds pitiful. "Ben…" She whimpers his name again, like maybe if she could just say it enough times, she could return to how things were supposed to be. They could emerge from this nightmare, pretend that it never happened. They could be back at the diner, they could be sitting out back on those wooden pallets sharing French fries, laughing during golden hour. Ben could puff out his chest and pinch his face and put on that ridiculous Russian accent he does when he's doing his impression of Anichka. They could be happy.

There's a string of saliva connecting her top lip to her bottom one when she cries, and it's almost hard to see him through her blur of tears. "Ben… how could you?"

The man behind her shifts. She can hear him smiling as his hot breath wafts over the shell of her ear. "You come highly requested, you know that? Heard the boss man is selling you for a big chunk of change." Some of the men looking on chuckle, and Taylor squirms, turning her face away as more tears stream down her face. "What's so special about you, huh? You have an extra sweet pussy, is that it?" When his hand slips beneath her skirt, cupping her between her legs, she lets out a scream that is blood-curdling.

"Don't touch me!"

She struggles in his hold again, but there's nothing to do and nowhere to go, not with her arms trapped behind her, the plastic zip tie digging painfully into her bare wrist, too tight around the lower end of her cast.

The men laugh as she writhes and cries to get free, and Ben is renewed into action again, pushing and struggling against the three men trying to hold him back.

"Let go of her!" Ben shouts.

"Come off it, Ben, it's a little late for the heroics."

She's not sure which one of them says that, but all she knows is that in the next moment, Ben has managed to break free, and everything suddenly dissolves into a blur of chaos and movement. Ben swings his elbow back and catches one of the men next to him right in the throat, and the man goes down instantly. Ben spins around and throws fists with another one of them—the one on his left-hand side who had taunted him before—landing a hard punch to the man's ribs and then another to the underside of his jaw. Taylor sees the blood pouring from the man's nose, even as he staggers back into a fighting stance.

There's shouting, and confusion, and she is roughly yanked farther back, away from the fray, but she can't stop watching. Ben is violent—ferocious in his assault—moving with a speed she wouldn't have expected from someone so large. His power is all adrenaline-fueled, his hair whipping around his face as he swings his powerful arms, grunting, laying punches into the other men that are audible, grabbing fistfuls of their shirts only to use it as leverage to haul them to the ground.

"You better back the fuck down, Ben! It's five against one, you dumb shit!"

Technically it's four, since the man holding her hostage can't help, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to Ben. They all swarm on him, and even then, he won't stop fighting. She can tell the man behind her is itching to join, and when another one of the men doesn't get up, she thinks that maybe he might have to.

"Somebody get afucking grip on him!" the man holding her shouts, his forearm shifting now so it's just under her breasts, and she feels like he's going to crush her ribcage from how tight he's squeezing.

She watches helplessly as Ben drives one of them into the ground with his fists, grunting and wrestling in the gravel with him. When Ben finally has him subdued, somehow managing to fight off the other man at the same time, Taylor allows herself half a second to feel hopeful. Maybe he can get her out of this. Maybe she'll be okay. He knows it was wrong to bring here her. He's sorry. They'll manage to get in the car and escape. She'll be safe. Everything will be okay.

Her heart somersaults at the possibility of freedom, so close she just wants to reach out and wrap her arms around it, cradle it close.

She has to root for him even though he's betrayed her. He's the only hope she has.

She watches as Ben goes to stand, chest heaving and body sweat-slicked, ready for another fight.

But the moment never comes.

Taylor jumps suddenly at the sharp crackle of a gunshot splitting through the air—so loud and startling it makes her heart lurch into her throat—and then it's all over.

It's over.

She watches Ben slump to the ground. It's a clean shot—right to the head—and it takes Taylor a moment to process what's happened.

For a second, all she can hear is the shrill, warbling echo of the gunshot as it reverberates through the trees. A gunshot you could hear for miles.

Then she's blinking, horrified, at the dark pool of crimson that's slowly blooming around Ben's head. A wet, bloody halo. She stares at the stillness of Ben's body, as if waiting for him to reanimate, as if waiting for him get up and start fighting again. She stares at him, slumped on the ground, face-down, the awkward crumple of his large frame, the way his right arm is positioned at an angle that should be impossible.

And then she looks up—they all do—towards the figure looking down on them from the porch. When the shotgun is lowered, and the figure's face is revealed, Taylor's mouth parts in horror.

Ruby.

Her breath shudders through her lungs in a trembling wave, and she can only stand there. Stunned.

The man behind her must be equally as shocked, because he releases her, his arms falling away, and in the next moment she is looking back at Ben, needing to see him, unable to comprehend what's just taken place, how fast it all fell apart. She can't help it when she slumps to the gravel on her knees, chin to chest, sobbing so hard she can't even see beyond the cascade of her own tears. She longs to bury her face in her hands—hide herself from these strangers, from the world—but with her hands tied behind her back, she can do nothing but gasp and cry, the image of Ben's prostrate body and the spray of blood before he hit the ground burned behind her lids. The kind of image she'll never be able to forget.

The caustic burn of bile that rushes up her throat comes on so suddenly that she can't swallow it back down, her mouth watering uncontrollably, and in the next moment she's leaning forward and heaving onto the gravel, her breakfast from earlier that morning unloading from her stomach, brown and nasty. Her head swims, vision fuzzing, and she feels a hand fisting the back of her shirt to keep her upright as she dry heaves. She can't stop picturing Ben. Dead Ben. Dead Ben.

And then her brain is uselessly echoing the same thought from before: this can't be real. How can this be real?

When it's finally done, she turns her head, wipes her mouth off on her shoulder as best she can, crying and shuddering, sitting back on her haunches now. She can taste the salt of her tears on her lips, the brown tang of bile. The panic.

The sky overhead has turned gunmetal gray, the sun stifled, suffocated behind too many clouds, and the breeze has started to pick up, pushing through the trees, making the long timbers creak and groan in the wind. Her face pinches at the astringent bite of pine, so sharp in her nose, stinging her throat. When the wind pushes the hair back from her face, she feels a raindrop splatter on her cheek.

The men around her grumble and curse—one of them is still out cold from when Ben had punched him, and she watches as the man's body is nudged in the ribs with the toe of someone's boot. She looks away in disgust.

They argue about what to do with Ben's body, but she's only half listening. It all sounds so far away. She hears the rain pattering against the car, tinny and soft at first, rain plinking against the roof and the steel hood, and then growing heavier as the wind picks up.

When she's pulled to her feet, she doesn't fight it, and she's guided through the driveway and then through a sea of tickly grass, so tall it nearly brushes past her knees. They reach a makeshift path where it's been flattened out in front of the steps just as the sky rumbles in warning.

It's slow going up the long, narrow staircase to the upper deck, especially with her hands trapped behind her back. Her knees are weak, her nerves so lit up that she trembles the whole way up the stairwell, and when she lifts her head to meet Ruby's gaze at the top, the woman's eyes are dark and full of bloodlust, the kind that stains your irises red when you're fresh from a kill. She knows that look. She's seen it on Mr. J.

Ruby hands the shotgun to one of the men who had jogged up the stairs ahead of them, and then she jerks her head towards the sliding glass door.

Seeing Ruby—knowing she's just murdered Ben—makes her spine prickle with fear, and she resists when the man tries to push her over the threshold.

"Almost there, little girl," he says, shoving her, and her heart races as the door is slid open and she's pushed through.

It's dark inside. Cold. She shivers under the blast of recycled air, her clothes a little damp from the rain, her skin prickling and lit up with a fresh wave of goose bumps. She hears the door sliding shut behind them, and then it's just the sound of the rain on the wooden deck and its hypnotic thrum as it drums against the shingles on the roof.

She hungrily soaks up her surroundings, possible routes of escape. It's tinier than she expected. Cramped. There's a kitchen and a small living room, all shared within the same space, a closed door to their immediate left, and then a dark, narrow hallway to the right, just beyond the living room. An opened door to her right leads into a sunroom, glass windows on all side. Three rectangular skylights. There's a wooden dining room table in there and some chairs, and it looks as if it's been turned into a makeshift office—if the papers scattered on the table and the cardboard boxes stacked along the wall are anything to go by.

It smells like stale cigarettes and old furniture—musty and a little damp—and they're accompanied only by the darkening greyish light of the day's end as it seeps in from the sliding glass door and from the window above the kitchen sink. It's a grey, milky light that pales the room, bathing the furniture in strange, creamy shadows, not quite strong enough to illuminate the dark corners of the room and all its hidden crevices.

She swallows back her panic as she takes it all in, her heartbeat thudding hard in her ears. What's supposed to happen next? What are they going to do with her? What is this place?

"I want him taken care of before Hank gets here," Ruby's smooth, cool voice says from behind her. Taylor can't believe how unfazed she is. This can't be the first time she's killed someone. "You understand?"

"And her?"

Taylor waits while Ruby circles around to her front, and then she's looking up at the older woman imploringly even though she knows it's no use. She knows she won't be garnering any sympathy from her. She understands that now.

"I'll take her." Her grip is much gentler around Taylor's upper arm than the man's, though he still doesn't let go of her, and then she's caught between the two of them in some kind of weird standoff, neither of them willing to relinquish their hold. "By the way," Ruby says, her gaze sliding away from Taylor long enough to fix the man behind her with an ice-cold glare, "if I ever catch you touching the merchandise like that again, you're going to wish I had put a bullet through your skull like I did Ben."

The man does release his hold from around Taylor's upper arm after that, putting up both hands in mock defense.

"Whatever you say. Boss."

The way the corner of Ruby's mouth curls—just barely, just enough for Taylor to see—makes her heart plummet into her stomach. Was she the boss that the man had mentioned earlier? Or is it Hank? Surely he's apart of this, too—whatever this is. She shakes her head at Ruby as she's passed off, so afraid of what's going to happen next.

"Ruby, please," she begs, her throat tightening with the threat of more unshed tears. "Please don't do this."

Ruby ignores her, guiding her towards the closed door off to the left. The old, laminate floor in the kitchen creaks under their footsteps.

She can hear some of the men talking in low voices near the sliding glass door, something about 'the iceberg', and she wonders why that sounds familiar, why she feels like she's heard that before. She glances behind her to see them standing there, talking amongst themselves, one of them still nursing a bloody nose—courtesy of Ben—but Ruby gives her arm a warning jerk, forcing her to redirect her attention forward again.

She thinks about how it should be a relief to get away from these men, but the image of what Ruby did to Ben is still burned into her mind, and she already knows that it is one of those snapshots in time she will never be able to forget. She knows from experience how memories like this can stale with age, how they can blister, and bleed, and scar, and rot—and how they never go away.

It's the kind of violence that time and memory cannot erase: Ben's prostrate body, crumpled, face down in the dirt. The sickening, dark sheen of blood pooling around his head, all glossy and wet, like an oil spill that is crimson instead of black.

When the door squeaks open, Ruby gently pushes her inside with a hand between her shoulder blades, and Taylor is quick to scan the room, soaking it all up, her eyes raking over everything. She searches again for more avenues of escape, things she might use as weapons, ways she might stall whatever it is that is about to happen.

The door clicks shut behind them, and she hears the turn of the lock. A chain sliding into place. Fear prickles along her spine like the icy bite of a sharpened blade. Why does she have a lock and chain on a bedroom door?

The room is small and cramped, and there's a tall, narrow window off to the left that looks out over the front of the house, and another one directly across from them on the opposite wall that shows only the encroaching woods, the lumbering pines as their branches sway in the wind. The floor-length curtains are sheer and gauzy, the color of skin that is jaundiced, and the light that hemorrhages through is bilious, like a cancer.

A queen-sized bed takes up the bulk of the room, pushed up against the wall on the right. An upright wooden dresser painted white—that old paint that chips and curls, the kind with lead in it—with weathered brass knobs that are either crooked or missing. Her eyes flicker over the top, where there is an oval-shaped mirror and an assortment of makeup and pretty glass perfume bottles arranged in the center of a crochet doily. A makeshift vanity. There's a little jewelry box, and then a wooden chair in the corner of the room with some clothes draped over the back. Several pairs of women's shoes lined against the wall. No closet. Just one nightstand with an analog clock. The bedspread is faded and eggshell white, looking about as old as the rest of the house does.

It dawns on Taylor that this might be Ruby's room, and she frowns at the realization. Is this where she lives?

Her face pales when she notices the handcuffs locked around one of the wooden slats of the headboard, and she instinctively takes a step back, bumping into Ruby.

"Let's take these off, yeah?"

Her warm breath on the back of Taylor's neck makes her spine prickle, and she waits, trembling, as Ruby slices through the zip tie. Scissors or knife, she doesn't know, but a second later the top drawer of the dresser closes once again, and whatever it was is out of sight.

Taylor whimpers when she pulls her arms in front of her, the muscles so taut and sore all throughout her arms and shoulders. It feels good to be able to stretch them out, even though they ache.

Outside, a long roll of thunder rumbles through the room as she bends her right arm in its cast and flexes the fingers of that hand, trying to get the blood flowing again. It'll be a miracle if her wrist heals properly after all the trauma she's been through since having the cast placed.

Not that that matters now.

Ruby circles around to her front, and Taylor swallows. Her eyelashes are wet and clumpy from her tears, and they stick to her cheeks when she blinks. She sniffles as she looks up at the other woman, both of them colored in this weird shade of almost-dusk, the pancreatic pallor that bleeds all throughout the room, the setting sun making one last valiant effort to be seen. The rain's nothing more than a mist, now, and she knows they're under the spell of the sickly yellow calm that comes right before a storm.

"Why did you do that to Ben?" Taylor croaks. "You didn't have to do that."

Ruby rolls her eyes, irritated, like she already knew Taylor was going to ask this. "What was I supposed to do, let him run off and tell the police where you were? Let him make some noble attempt to save you? It had to be done."

When Ruby inches closer, closing the distance between them in a way that makes Taylor's spine curl, Taylor forces herself to stand her ground. Ruby's green eyes are piercing and sharp, even in the dimming light. Her eyeliner a little smudged, her lids smoky black and shiny with sweat. The lobes of her ears are each pierced with silver hoops, and the right one winks at her when Ruby tilts her head, a little smile curling the corners of her mouth.

Taylor shakes her head at her, and it's a moment before she can speak again as she desperately fights back the tears that have lodged in her throat.

"You're evil," she whispers. She says it with the kind of vitriol she didn't even know she was capable of, her brows furrowed together in her anger, her hands clenched at her sides in tights fists. She catches the tick in Ruby's jaw, the dangerous narrowing of her eyes.

Ruby slaps her.

It happens so fast Taylor doesn't even have time to flinch away, and the flat of her palm on Taylor's cheek stings after. She gasps and stumbles back a step, more from the unexpectedness of the blow rather than from the force of it.

Ruby's eyes are fire-bright—excited—as Taylor cups her own cheek, tears slipping over her fingers as she stares back at the other woman.

"I've been wanting to do that for a long time," she breathes, and Taylor doesn't miss the excited shudder that ripples through her, her heaving chest, where her breasts threaten to spill out of her low-cut top. She stares at Taylor—mesmerized—like she can't believe this is happening. "I knew you'd cry."

Taylor bites down on her tongue so hard it nearly bleeds, and when she finally releases it from the prison of her clenched teeth, she drops her hand from the side of her face, where her cheek still throbs hotly.

She lunges towards Ruby without even thinking about it.

She doesn't know what she expects to happen—maybe she thinks she can knock Ruby to the ground, pin her to the floor and find some warped sense of satisfaction from being on top and in control, for once, even if just for a few seconds—but instead she sends Ruby's back colliding into the closed door with a hard thud. Ruby grimaces, clearly taken by surprise, and as Taylor claws at her face and chest, Ruby gets her hands on Taylor's shoulders and gets a knee up, wedges it in between them in a way that allows her to force Taylor back enough to kick her in the stomach.

Taylor folds in on herself out of instinct as she stumbles back a few steps, and then she goes down hard from the momentum of being kicked away, landing on her right side on the floor.

Ruby is on her in seconds, and there's no time to think as she's pushed onto her back and her waist is straddled, Ruby so heavy on top of her as she struggles to pin Taylor's wrists to the carpet.

Taylor knows Ruby is bigger and stronger—but she still fights for all she's worth. She even manages to squirm onto her side and send her left elbow flying back into Ruby's nose.

"Fuck!" Ruby shouts, rearing back.

Taylor tries to use the opportunity to squirm out from in between Ruby's thighs, but the woman just bares her teeth, tightening her legs and shifting her weight forward, getting Taylor on her back again. She winds her hands around Taylor's throat and nestles her thumbs into the dip of Taylor's throat, that little hollow bowl.

Taylor lets out an aborted gasp, bucking her hips and trying to dismantle her. She flails and kicks her legs and tries to get a knee in between them like Ruby had done earlier, but it doesn't work. Ruby's hands tighten around her throat, but she doesn't apply enough pressure to choke her, just enough to make her wind pipe narrow. Just enough to make it harder to breathe. It dawns on Taylor that perhaps she's done this before, that she knows what she's doing. She manages to get her hands around Ruby's wrists and tugs hard in order to release some of the pressure, twisting her neck out of the other woman's grip with a sharp cry. Her heart beats so fast it throbs inside her eardrums, blocking out all other sound.

"Stay down," Ruby snarls, bending down so low their noses are almost touching.

Taylor meets Ruby's fiery gaze for just a moment, both of them panting for breath, time seeming to slow to a crawl as Taylor blinks up at her, hating Ruby in this moment, so full of blind rage that she's hot with it, the blood in her veins scalding; it feels like she'll burn from the inside out if she doesn't feed her fury and do something with it.

Taylor bares her teeth in a vicious snarl, and in the next moment, she is lunging forward, her hands fisting the front of Ruby's shirt for balance as she hooks her teeth around the metallic hoop dangling from Ruby's right ear.

She rips the earring clean off.

Ruby screams, reeling back, cupping the side of her head where blood has already started to ooze.

Taylor spits the silver hoop out of her mouth. She's panting and full of adrenaline as she glances at the carpet. She doesn't miss the piece of bloody, fleshy cartilage lying there. She can't believe she did that.

Her eyes dart up to meet Ruby's, alarmed, and she desperately scoots back on her elbows as Ruby starts to stand.

"You bitch," Ruby growls.

Ruby is on her in seconds, before she has time to react, and they wrestle for dominance once again, Ruby fighting with renewed vigor as she straddles Taylor's waist, works to get her arms pinned.

"Let me go!" Taylor screams, tasting the nasty, copper brine of Ruby's blood in her mouth when she does.

It feels like it goes on for a long time, the two of them thrashing and fighting, but it can't be more than a few seconds before Taylor suddenly notices the presence standing in the doorway, just over Ruby's shoulder. Her eyes widen in terror, and she lets up just as Ruby finally manages to get Taylor's arms pinned to either side of her head. There's blood all over the front of Taylor's white polo, some smeared along her cheek and her right upper arm, just above her cast.

Ruby frowns at her after she's gotten Taylor's hands pinned, panting, and she follows Taylor's gaze towards the bedroom door, craning her neck to look behind her.

Hank is leaning up against the closed door, looking so casual with his arms folded, legs crossed at the ankle. It looks like he's been standing there a long time, watching them.

"Am I interrupting?" he asks.

Ruby is slow to dismantle. She sits back on Taylor's thighs as she releases her grip from Taylor's arms, both of their chests heaving. Ruby wipes away the blood dripping down the side of her neck with the palm of her hand.

"Fucking attacked me," Ruby mutters. She gets to her feet and looks down at Taylor with such utter disdain it makes Taylor's cheeks burn with rage. Taylor tries to prop herself onto her elbows, not wanting to feel so small and defenseless, but even that hurts too much. She turns onto her side instead, away from them, but that's all she can mange. She's exhausted, even as Hank's presence sends a new wave of fear washing over her, making the hairs on her arms and legs stand on end.

"Did she?" Hanks asks, and Taylor's face burns even hotter under his scrutiny, those piercing blue eyes. She can only stare when he pushes up from the door, makes his way to her. He stands next to Ruby so they can both look down at her, and it's hard not to squirm with both of them looking at her like this, like she's a piece of meat and they're about to tear her in two.

Ruby scoffs, suddenly, like she's so disgusted with Taylor she can't even bear to look at her anymore, and Taylor watches her turn away, retreat to her dresser where she finds an old, ratty washcloth and dabs at her ear with it, staring into the round mirror atop her dresser.

"Fucking hell," she mutters. "Look at this." She tilts her head to the side and tucks back the curly strands of her hair that have fallen loose from her bun to show Hank her damaged ear. Taylor wonders if it'll ever heal.

Hank assess the damage, and then his eyes are sliding back down to her, where she lies pitifully on the floor. He takes a few step towards her, and then he is crouching down next to her feet, his hands clasped between his thighs, just like the way he did when he took her into his office and made her cry, when he told her they were family.

"I'm disappointed in you, Taylor," he says. "I really expected more from you."

Taylor gapes at him, at a loss for words. "She—she killed Ben," she cries. She doesn't know why she says it—of course he knows Ruby killed Ben. It's probably not even the worst thing she's ever done.

She has to close her eyes to stop the oncoming panic attack, squeezing them shut tight as tears slip down her cheeks. Maybe if she keeps them closed long enough, this will all turn out to be a bad dream. She'll wake up somewhere else, back at home, maybe. Curled up against Mr. J's chest, her face nestled in the crook of his neck and shoulder. His arms around her, holding her tight. He'll tell her it was just a bad dream. Just a dream.

"And you're responsible for that, aren't you?" Hank says, nodding sympathetically, even though she knows it's disingenuous. "Isn't that what this little outburst is about?"

She starts to shake her head—Ben's death is not her fault, it's not—but Hank shifts closer, laying a hand on her knee even though she jerks her leg away, frowning at him. He is not deterred, and when his hand settles on her ankle instead, he strokes over the soft skin there with his thumb, skirting his thumb back and forth as she stares at him.

"What's going to happen to me?" The quiver in her voice is pitiful, but she can't help thinking that she's going to die here, that this is the end for her. Ruby is vile—Hank, too—and Taylor can't believe she ever trusted them, can't believe she ever thought of Ruby as a friend. She knows there's no exit here. There is no one who will be coming to save her.

No one ever does.

Hank lifts a brow at her question. He cranes his neck to look back at Ruby for a moment, as if surprised that Ruby hasn't told her yet. Ruby ignores him, too busy reapplying her makeup in the mirror, a mascara brush poised along her lower lid. When Hank turns back to look at Taylor, he smiles at her in that warm, fatherly way that's at complete odds with the situation.

"Why don't I show you?" he says.

When he stands, offering her his hand, Taylor can only stare at it—transfixed, for some reason—until Ruby stomps over and breaks the spell, standing behind Taylor and lifting her up from the floor with her arms braced under Taylor's armpits.

"She's not going to listen," Ruby snaps, still fuming. Taylor cries out as she's hauled up from the floor, and Hank has the audacity to look sorry for her as Ruby introduces another zip tie, tying it much tighter than the first. She winces as it cuts into her left wrist. "Spoiled brats like her never do."

Hank chuckles a little in response. Amused. He steps forward to take her into his arms.

"There," he says, smoothing his rough, calloused palms up and down over the bare expanse of her upper arms, like he means to comfort her; all he does is ignite a field of goose bumps in his wake. "I'll take it from here."

His hands are warm, and his touch is deceptively gentle from behind her as he guides her out of the room, his chest brushing up against her shoulder as he reaches around her to open the door.

The kitchen is empty—none of the men from earlier in sight—and the house is eerily quiet now that the rain's stopped. Even the hum of the refrigerator is absent. It's like everything's been shut off in anticipation for this moment. Like the world has been stopped on its axis, leaving her feeling off-balance and nauseous.

She can still taste the bile in her mouth from earlier as Hank guides her towards that darkened hallway she had taken note of earlier. She feels like she floats the whole way there, like her feet aren't even moving, like she's on a conveyer belt or something. It's like she's outside of her own body, watching everything happen from a distance. Like being in a dream.

She can hear Ruby's footfalls following close behind them, and when Hank reaches around Taylor to open a door to their right, all she sees is blackness. She doesn't move. Waits for Hank's instruction.

"Watch your step," he says, his voice low.

His words make her shiver, and a tiny, distressed sound catches in the back of her throat.

Neither of them move to turn on a light, and she knows she'll have to make do without. She swallows, inching closer to the edge of the floor and slowly lowering her foot until she finds the first step, trusting that Hank won't let go of her and allow her to topple down the staircase. Without the use of her hands, she has nothing to hold onto.

Behind them, the door clicks shut at the top of the stairs, and if she thought it was dark before, she realizes now just how terrifying true darkness really is.

The steps are hard, wooden—no carpeting—and she can tell it's fresh plywood from the way it smells. The heady, warm stink of fresh-cut lumber, the taste of dry sawdust, so sharp in her nostrils, making her eyes water. Their footfalls echo loudly as they descend the stairs.

Something comes over her then—this brutal, noxious chill, like she's just stepped straight through a ghost, felt its invisible chill as she passed through its shapeless body—and she senses immediately that they're not alone. She can't explain how, or why she feels this way, but she knows that they're not. She can hear it—feel it—the spine-prickling sensation that there is something or somebody down here. Perhaps more than one somebody.

The closer she gets, the stronger the sensation becomes, and she's not sure if she's imagining the sound of something moving—the restless jangle of metal—or if it's actually real. It's pitch black.

The air is damp and musty down here—even more so than it was upstairs—and it's warmer, too, almost unbearably humid, and the room stinks of something. Sweat, or maybe piss.

Then something whimpers.

Taylor stops in her tracks without even meaning to, startled by the sound, her foot hovering in midair above the drop of the next step, and when she hears the sound again, this time coming from the other direction, she knows she didn't imagine it.

Her ears prickle at the sound of more shifting, this time like claws scraping against hard plastic and more rattling metal, and her heart thuds at the possibilities. Dogs? Some other large animal?

Hank urges her forward once more, and just two more steps later, she's reached the end of the staircase and is stepping onto concrete. She strains a little in her bindings, her hands already starting to grow numb from how tightly Ruby had secured the zip tie. Sweats beads between her breasts and the slips down the knobs of her spine. She squirms uncomfortably because it makes her want to itch.

"Where am I?" she whispers.

The lights come on in a series of shuddering clicks—buzzing, white-hot fluorescents—and Taylor sucks in a startled breath.

They're not dogs.

They're girls.

Ten—fifteen—at least twenty of them—locked in separate kennels, those big, black metal crates with the hard plastic floors. Her eyes sweep around the room as all the blood rushes to her head, and she is horrorstruck. Terrified. Some of the girls are dressed, but most are naked, and Taylor wants to avert her eyes out of a sense of decency, but she can't look away. Their bodies so pale, slick with sweat, their mouths gagged with spit-soaked cloth. Every direction she looks is another frightened, blinking face staring back at her—some of them are even younger than she is. Some of them can't be older than ten.

"Welcome to the nursery, Taylor."

It's Hank who says it, breathing right down her neck, his warm breath lighting up her nerves. She's caught in the clenched fists of fight or flight, doesn't know whether to make a run for it or try to fight back somehow—but she already knows that neither are feasible options; she won't get far with her hands tied behind her back.

But she feels it in her bones—the all-consuming fear—the feeling that nothing has ever been more terrifying than this moment. Not the basement she had been locked in as a child, not the abuse she had suffered throughout her entire life in the foster system, not the things Mr. J had made her do, not the car accident, not Nathan, the rape—not even Mr. J being taken away from her when she was a little girl, which, up until this moment, had been the scariest moment of her entire life.

Not anymore.

The terror that settles itself inside her body now is overwhelming. There's no time for crying, for tears—only mind-numbing panic as she stares at these girls cowering in their kennels, all of them gazing back at her, looking so frightened, so hopeless. Looking at her with their sad, desperate eyes, knowing that she, too, is about to suffer the same fate as them.

Taylor lets out a series of shuddering exhales, her whole body trembling as she stumbles back, right into Hank's chest.

"No," she says, "No, no, no," she cries. She twists in her restraints, stepping sideways, away from Hank, knowing her struggles are useless, knowing there's nothing she can do, but she has to try. "I want to go home," she says, again and again. "I want to go home!"

The girls are starting to blur through her veil of tears, and she hears some of them whimpering, some of them shifting in their crates, and it all feels like a nightmare. How can this be real? How could she have allowed herself to get tangled in such a sticky, nasty web?

When Hank's arms circle her from behind, pulling her into his chest, she's too stunned to fight him. She lets him turn her around so he can press her face into his chest while she cries and sobs and works herself into a shuddering panic attack.

He rubs her back and pets her hair, and all she can is sob hysterically into his shirt while he shushes her, while she shuts her eyes against the lights and the naked girls and their terrified, blinking eyes.

"Sh, sh, sh," Hank says, rubbing her between her shoulder blades in a parody of comfort. Her arms are still trapped behind her back, and she can't even push him away. "It's okay to be frightened," he says, loud enough that she can hear him above the sounds of her heaving sobs. "But I've got something special planned for you."

That makes her cry even harder, and she hears herself begging, "Please, please," over and over again. "Please let me go," she blubbers. "I promise I won't tell, I promise, I promise, you don't have to do this!"

Taylor jerks her head away from Hank's chest when something sharp sinks into the fleshy portion of her upper arm. She tries to look, but Hank only shushes her once again, presses on her skull and urges her head back down onto his chest.

She sobs, open-mouthed, tasting the starched fabric of his shirt, the clean, fresh scent of his cologne—such a stark contrast to the smell of all these sweating girls. Their emesis and their excrement.

The drug kicks in fast. It's cold under her skin. She can feel it inside her, the liquid sliding through her veins, and then the medicine is washing over her in great big tidal waves, one slow wave cresting after another, pummeling her further into unconsciousness when the wave troughs. Her heartbeat slows, her limbs turning heavy. Her head lolls forward, into Hank's chest, too heavy for her to hold up on her own. Her eyelids start to flutter next, and the world fuzzes in and out, radio static clinging to the peripherals of her vision. In and out, the room distorting like she's looking at it through a tries to cling to reality, hold onto the edges of her landscape, to the panic that grounds her, but it keeps slipping away, washing away with the tide.

She feels like she's adrift at sea. Like she's sinking. Like she's being pulled under.

There are hands all over her, and in the next moment, she is being laid down on her back, something hard underneath her. She manages to roll onto her side with the last bit of strength she has, drool slipping out of her mouth, and the whole world tilts on its axis right along with her. She feels like she's falling, falling, falling. She's going to slide right off the edges of the map, into the secret void where no one will be able to find her.

As blackness unspools around her, her eyes fluttering shut, all she can think is, I hope Mr. J will be there too.

---

She wakes with a startled gasp, like she's just surfaced from being trapped underwater for a very long time.

Her chest is heaving as she sucks in air, desperate to fill her lungs with it. She's curled up on her side, her arms still pinned behind her back—numb, now—and a whine of pain gets tangled in her throat when she tries to stretch out her fingers to get the blood flowing again, to ease the prickling sensation of pins and needles that tingles all up and down her arms.

She tries to sit up but can't, and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, for her senses to return to her body. Her limbs feel heavy, her mind sluggish, as if clouded over by a thick fog. She doesn't know where she is, or how she got here.

She frowns into the darkness as her memories trickle back to her slowly, and then all at once. The car ride with Ben. The men who had approached the car, ripped her out of it. Ruby killing Ben, and the basement. The girls.

Her eyes dart up, towards the tinted square plate of window above her, and she realizes she's in a trunk—maybe the trunk of the same SUV that had been parked outside the house when she'd first arrived.

She watches the hazy, golden stripes of light that flicker through the window at regular intervals, hypnotized for a moment by the passing streetlamps. The occasional burst of an LED billboard, blue and red light flashing through the window before slipping away. Everything darkens for a moment when they pass through a tunnel, and it's darker here, sound muffled on all sides, but there are cords of light along the top edges of the tunnel that are golden and syrupy, like tendrils of honey. For a moment, the light is almost comforting—soft, somehow—and she can allow herself to be lulled by the comfort of its gentle glow, the sensation of the car vibrating underneath her. She closes her eyes and tries to breathe. Just breathe.

They hit a pothole shortly after exiting the tunnel, and she nearly ends up faceplanting into the door of the trunk.

She whimpers and tries to shift into a position that's more comfortable, looking up just in time to catch Ruby staring down at her from the backseat. Taylor notices the chunk of flesh missing from her earlobe for the first time—really notices—and it makes her flinch a little, her brows pulling together the longer she stares at it. It looks painful.

Ruby turns away without saying anything, and Taylor stares for a moment at the back of her head, the little black constellation of stars tattooed along the back of her neck, and then her gaze drifts towards the man sitting in the seat just in front of Taylor's head, the same man who had tackled her to the ground, zip-tied her hands and then gotten in that weird stand-off with Ruby.

She wonders about Ben. What they did with his body. If they buried or burned him. Maybe something worse.

She wonders about the girls in the basement. How long they've been down there. What's going to happen to them. And she wonders where they're taking her now—if her fate is any different from theirs.

Time drags slowly on, unfueled even by her adrenaline, and it feels like at least another half hour passes before they finally come to a stop. She's instantly on edge as the SUV shuts off. She hears the jingle of keys as they're pulled from the ignition, and her muscles clench up, fear throbbing in her belly, a living thing, pounding in time with her pulse.

She looks up, watches as Ruby and the other man slide out of the backseat. The sound of doors opening and slamming. Everyone out of the car, now, save for the taut silence they've left behind, and she strains her ears to listen to the sound of their shuffling footsteps and muffled voices, growing closer. It's too dark outside to see through the windows.

Where are they?

"—about us being late," she hears someone say as they approach, a voice she doesn't think she's heard before. Maybe the driver. "I've heard he's real anal about that."

"Well he's just gonna have to deal with it," comes Ruby's irritated reply. Taylor wonders what's got her so on edge. Maybe she's still pissed off about her ear.

"You sure this is—"

"Will you shut up already?" Ruby snaps. "Help me get her."

The trunk opens with a hydraulic hiss, and Taylor's head shoots up to look at the three—no, four—faces looking down at her, all of them barely visible in the darkness. The other two men must have been sitting in the front.

"Time to get moving," Ruby says. She reaches for Taylor's shoulders as one of the other men grabs her legs, and between the two of them, they manage to get her onto her feet.

She wobbles in the dark. The world swims for a moment once she's standing, and her head feels heavy. Too big for her body. She thinks she's going to fall flat on her face until Ruby's standing behind her, gripping her upper arm with punishing force, forcing her forward with a shove.

"Move."

Nausea sloshes in her belly when she lurches forward, but it's a relief to be outside, to be breathing fresh air, even though it's humid out and she's sticky with sweat. She can tell it didn't rain here, that the pavement beneath her shoes are dry.

She accidentally bites down on the inside of her cheek as she's dragged through the dark, and she can taste the tang of blood in her mouth. She tries to soothe the inside of her cheek with her tongue, but it just stings as she drags her tongue over it. All she has is Ruby's hand clenched around her upper arm to guide her, and the heavy footsteps of the other men, two trudging in front of them, and one behind.

She feels the cement giving way to gravel a moment later—loose rocks—and then their footfalls are even softer as they pad over dirt. She knows they're back within the depths of the city, wherever they are. She can hear the familiar whine of far-off police sirens, the steady rumble of cars on a nearby exit ramp.

She swallows and thinks about Mr. J, feels the tears pricking behind her eyes when she does. She'd do anything to be with him again. She can't believe how stupid she was to take him for granted—and to think that she didn't even tell him where she was going before she left. Didn't leave him a note. Will he be wondering where she is? Is he even home yet to realize she's not there? Will he coming looking for her?

It's hard to wrap her brain around how perfect things almost were between them, how she was finally beginning to feel loved, and safe, and wanted, after years and years of hungrily chasing after those sensations with such reckless abandon. Now, when they were right there on the tip of her tongue for her to swallow, they had been so cruelly yanked away.

She'd never get to see him again.

And she might die before morning.

Both are horrifying truths to have to swallow, and as much as she wants to cry, her anxiety won't let her; the way it has its long, spindly fingers clenched around her throat in a vice, and all she can do is try not to hyperventilate.

She doesn't want to die. Not like Ben. Not like that.

The four of them approach a flattened out sectioned of land sandwiched between some old industrial buildings. It's a large construction plot, from what she can tell, meant to house at least four or five buildings, all of it confined within a massive chain-link fence to keep out trespassers.

They enter through a hole in the fence—all of them having to duck to get through—and Taylor stares at all the bulldozers and dump trucks, the huge crane that hangs suspended high above them, the foreboding gleam of steel against a black, starless sky; they all look like giant beasts slumbering in the dark, like something Jurassic, something terrifying if woken from their sleep and brought to animation.

They approach a two-story concrete building—hollowed out like a husk—empty inside save for the wooden framework of the walls to differentiate one room from the next. No glass in the windows yet, no doors. There's white light from the other side that bleeds through the empty windows—like light filtering through the bones of a skeleton—and as they round the side of the building, another one comes into view; this one even more skeletal in structure, bigger but more emaciated, just the framework slotted together, long slabs of steel and metal. It glimmers at them as they approach, winking at intervals. It look other-worldly from a distance, like the leftover corpse of what was once a glistening castle, maybe one made of glass. There are long strings of bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling at every level, illuminating the interior bones of its structure, all four floors lit-up.

She lets out a shuddering breath when she realizes they're headed right towards it.

A prickly wave of goose bumps burst over her skin when they're standing just underneath the structure, and she cranes her neck to look up at where it towers so large and foreboding above them, a behemoth of steel and metal. She jumps a little when the rustling of a blue tarp startles her where it's suspended between two pillars near the side of the building, acting as a makeshift wall. She watches it billow out in the window, looking like a big, rounded belly before it slowly deflates and caves back in on itself.

When they cross the threshold, stepping onto the concrete floor, the hair on her nape stands at attention. Already the air feels different, more suffocating. The bare lightbulbs must be pretty high voltage, because she can hear them sizzling in the otherwise eerie silence as she's urged forward, their footsteps slapping against the concrete.

The lights are hot, and there's sweat beading at the crown of her head, the little baby hairs along the back of her neck also damp from sweat.

She still doesn't understand why they're here, or where they're taking her, but she knows their destination is close, and the realization makes anxiety bubble up into the column of her throat, where it sits and waits, clogging her airway, making it hard to breathe.

When they round a corner to venture deeper into the maze of steel beams, her breath catches at the sudden appearance of a group of masked men at the end of the hallway they've just stepped into, standing there with machine guns slung over their shoulders. Looking at her.

Taylor's heart plummets, and her breathing turns shallow as she stops in her tracts. She finally understands, now. She's being passed off. She's being purchased.

Heard the boss man is selling you for a big chunk of change.

"No, no," she whimpers. "I don't want to do this, Ruby, please," she cries. Her back collides straight into the chest of the man who had been walking behind them, and Ruby yanks on her arm to make her keep going.

"Don't get cold feet on me now," she says.

"Please, please, don't do this. I won't tell. I promise I won't." She swallows to urge more moisture back in to her mouth. She knows how pathetic she sounds, but her fear clouds all other rational thought, and she really starts to resist then, digging her heels into the concrete, straining against Ruby's grip on her upper arm, even though both arms feel like they're going to fall off, like the blood flow's just stopped entirely.

"Keep moving," Ruby snaps.

The men are waiting for her in a half-moon circle, where there's ten, maybe fifteen of them. Far more than the three men Ruby has.

Something cold and slimy coils inside Taylor's stomach the closer they get, and her heart gives a painful lurch when she realizes the men are wearing rabbit masks, all identical, all with them same wide-eyed expression.

She blinks. The masks themselves are terrifying—more frightening than any Halloween mask she's ever seen—but perhaps even more terrifying is the strange sensation that slithers up her spine as she stares at all of them: the sensation that these masks look familiar. She knows—somehow she knows—that she's seen them somewhere before.

Ruby and her men draw to a halt several feet away from the group of masked men, Taylor's upper arm still held within the punishing grip of Ruby's hand.

All the men are dressed similarly in green or black cargo pants and black boots. Some of them are wearing black hoodies, even despite the heat, and others are in t-shirts.

Taylor stares at them all, and tries not to squirm when one of them steps forward, clearly the leader of the pack.

"You're late," the man says, voice muffled from the mask. Taylor has to crane her neck to stare up at him he's so tall, even taller than Mr. J. He looks skeletal. Like a wraith. The man bows forward at the waist suddenly, cocks his head to look at Taylor.

"This is her?"

"In the flesh," Ruby says. She sounds impatient. "Where's my money?"

Taylor stares at him, her brows furrowed together, her back pressed up against the man behind her in her effort to put as much distance as possible between her and them. The masks are even more frightening up close, and the hyper-realism of their features is jarring when coupled with the guns draped over their chests. The hair on the masks look real, like real animal fur. The bunny ears stick straight up at the top, and the mask's eye holes are taken up entirely with big, beady black eyes, like the big marbles she used to play with as a kid. A flat-shaped nose with whiskers sprouting from either side, and an almost playful-looking mouth, with the edge of two buckteeth visible. Goose bumps bursts over her skin in waves, and she recoils, digging her heels in. She knows this is bad.

The man doesn't move for a moment, still bent at the waist, still staring at Taylor with those beady marble eyes, eyes that catch the light and glimmer with the promise of danger. The eyes are so large she can see her own reflection staring back at her, is almost startled by the red slashed across her cheek, the slight speckling of blood, like a paint splatter.

With a jerk of the rabbit man's head—without taking his eyes off her—another masked man steps forward, depositing two black duffel bags at Ruby's feet. Ruby lets go of Taylor and crouches in front of the bags right there on the concrete, tearing open the zippers and raking her hands over the money inside. Taylor's never seen that much money in her life. She swallows anxiously, watching Ruby's lips move as she silently counts the stacks of bills.

It's a lot of money. That all can't be for her, can it?

"You're short," Ruby says after several loaded moments of silence. Her eyes roll up to fix the man with a heavy stare, and Taylor looks down at her, Ruby's mascara all deposited along her lower lash-line, her face slick with sweat. "Really short."

The man in front of her straightens back to his full height, and Taylor can finally release a small exhale of relief, glad not to have to bear the weight of his eyes on her anymore.

"You'll get the other half once she's been delivered," he says. "It's in transit as we speak."

"That's not what we agreed to."

The man shrugs his shoulders, and something about the way he does it unsettles Taylor, all slow and unbothered, almost mechanical. Something about this man doesn't feel right. Like he's not human or something.

"You can take it or leave it. But the girl is coming with us either way."

Her head jerks up at the sound of several guns being cocked, and she instinctively tries to take a step back, uncaring that she accidentally steps on the feet of the man behind her. Ruby slowly rises to stand.

"I swear to God," Ruby says, "if you don't follow through on this, all of you are going to find yourself without an employer soon."

The man at the front cocks his head again, tilting it at that same unnatural angle from before. "Are you threatening my boss? He doesn't take too kindly to intimidation tactics."

"Well I don't take too kindly to being lied to," Ruby sneers. "You tell him that when she gets delivered."

Taylor is shoved forward suddenly, and it happens so fast she doesn't have time to stop the momentum, can't use her hands to brace for the impending fall.

The masked man catches her around the shoulders as she's shoved into his chest. She tastes a mouthful of his shirt just as Ruby says, "You better watch her. She bites."

Taylor's breathing hard, on the verge of hyperventilating. She lifts her head and twists her neck to look over her shoulder, watching as two of Ruby's men bend to retrieve the duffle bags, slinging them around their shoulders. Then she watches them start to leave. Her heart shudders helplessly inside her chest.

"Ruby, wait—wait!" she screams, her voice high and shrill. "Don't leave me here!" She tries to twist around as the man grips her upper arms to keep her still. "Come back!" she sobs. "Come back!"

She doesn't want to go back to the basement—to the caged girls—but she wants even less to go with these strange men. At least she knows Ruby, and Hank, and even despite the atrocities she knows they're capable of, there's still comfort in knowing. But she doesn't know anything about these men, doesn't know what they want from her, who they're taking her to—and it's the not knowing that scares her most of all.

"Sh, sh," the man soothes. Taylor trembles as she cranes her neck to look up at him, into those shining black eyes. "It's okay. It's time to be quiet now."

She vigorously shakes her head, trying to wrench her body away from his. "Please, please let me go," she says. "I—I promise not to—not to tell." She's shuddering so hard she can barely talk, but it doesn't matter. He doesn't listen.

The man is surprisingly gentle with her as he wraps long fingers around her upper arm, just as Ruby had done, even as she tries to pull away from the contact. His fingers are ice cold.

"Come on, there's a good girl," he says, his voice dipping a little deeper. "Time to go now. Time to go home."

Home.

She breaks down into sobs as she's pulled forward, in the opposite direction from which she had come. When she looks behind her one final time as she's led away, Ruby and her men are already gone.

She knows—without a shadow of doubt—that she'll never see her again. The realization should come as a relief, but instead it makes her gut clench, makes nausea slosh in her belly, like the swell of a giant wave. Ruby might be the last familiar face she'll ever see. Ruby might be the last link to her former life, to what things were like before.

She cries even harder when she thinks about the diner. About Ben. She wishes she had never gone there. She wishes she would have listened when Mr. J had told her she didn't need a job. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why did she constantly feel the need to prove herself, to push? Why did she always have to test the boundaries of the invisible fences he had erected? It's clear to her now that he had done so as a means of protecting her. It makes her heart clench to think that he had done those things in order to keep her safe. How could she have been so blind? He was right when he'd said that Gotham would eat her up. Spit her back out. He was always right, about everything.

Tears blur her vision as she is led out of the building among the throng of other masked men. The light from the building falls away as they descend deeper into the darkness, down a steep embankment, and finally into a gravel parking lot. A flash of pink lightning brightens the sky, followed a few seconds later by the low grumble of thunder. Goose bumps bristle across her skin at the sound.

"You won't bite if I take these off, will you?"

Taylor is pushed down—belly first—onto the hood of a car before she has a chance to answer. She gasps at the hot press of the hood against her bare stomach, where her shirt has ridden up. The car's still warm even though it's off, and it burns the skin of her belly as she rears her head up, tries to arch up and away. Something slides through the zip ties binding her wrists together, and then suddenly her arms are free, falling limply to her sides. The relief is instant. She chokes on a sob as sensation finally starts to return to her fingers. She's pulled back into a standing position, and for a moment she is allowed to just stand there in the dark, her arms so heavy, feeling like deadweights. She cradles her cast against her stomach and slowly flexes the fingers of her right hand, trying to get the blood flowing again, the sharp prick of pins and needles finally starting to fade, just like before.

She looks up through a blur of tears, into the beady eyes embedded into the mask of the man who had freed her. She can barely see him in the darkness.

"That's better, isn't it?"

She doesn't say anything—and she doesn't even think about running, not with so many watchful eyes on her. Her gaze drifts to the men idling behind him, and she knows she wouldn't get far.

He's oddly gentle again as he pulls her towards another vehicle, this one an SUV, and he opens the back door on the passenger's side, gesturing for her to slip inside. She slides into the middle seat, where he climbs in after her. There's already another man sitting in the other seat, wearing the same rabbit mask as all the others. He doesn't look at her as she takes in the dark interior of the car, the black leather seats, soft and smooth under her bare thighs, the red lights all lit up over the dashboard. She catches the clock on the dash—almost twelve AM. Mr. J will have noticed she's not home by now, if he's even home himself. She's never out this late, and he knows her latest shifts always end at eleven. Will he be angry? Worried? Is he looking for her now? Would he come to the diner, start asking questions? How could he possibly find her here—wherever 'here' even is?

The stench of something sharp makes her scrunch her nose in distaste, something earthy and kind of stale wafting through her nostrils—she thinks it might be marijuana, can remember the girl's bathroom at school smelling like that sometimes after fifth period.

She anxiously wipes her tears away with the back of her arm, tries not to sniffle too loudly. She doesn't want to draw any unnecessary attention to herself. She decides she doesn't like the man to her right who has been so weirdly gentle with her. Something about him unnerves her even though he's been the only one to talk to her or try to comfort her.

Taylor sucks in a breath when he reaches across her suddenly, invading her space—terrified that he intends to touch her or hurt her in some way—and then feels like an idiot when she realizes he had only meant to buckle her in. The seatbelt is tugged snuggly over her waist, and he pats the buckle twice after it's clicked into place.

Another masked man slips into the passenger seat up from, and then the driver settles his hand over the center console and slips the gear shift into drive. She tries to be discrete about looking out the window, but she knows her eyes are wide as she tries to soak everything up, tries to figure out where they are. She searches desperately for a familiar landmark, some building she's seen before, maybe a street name that might ring a bell, but there's not much for her eyes to hold onto in the dark, not when the city speeds by in a blur of black and gold, not when her chest feels so tight with panic that it feels like her ribcage might crack from the strain, cave in on itself.

The ride is silent. Radio off. No one says anything, and everyone keeps their masks on. Taylor worries about the sound of her labored breathing, the occasional whimper that slips out without her even meaning it to. She tries to make herself small, tries not to bump shoulders with the men on either side of her, terrified of inflicting their wrath, or having one of them turning to look at her. She's relieved for the silence, but it's unnerving, too. She wishes someone would tell her where they're taking her. What's going to happen.

Maybe it's better that she doesn't know. Maybe it's better if she can remain blissfully ignorant for just a few moments longer.

It doesn't take long to reach their destination. Her heart lurches into her throat as the car rolls to a stop, and the ignition dies.

She's too scared to speak. She wants to ask where they are, what they're doing here, where they're going to take her—but her tongue feels as though a stake's been driven through it, rendering it immobile.

Rain patters softly when she slips out of the car, just a light drizzle, and it's hard to see in the dark. The golden lights of the city blink at her from a distance amongst the looming skyscrapers, and the skyline offers a fraction of comfort. It's hotter here, though—the air stifling and muggy—and she cranes her neck to one side and then the other, looking both ways, trying to figure out where she is, if this is some place that she's been before or might somehow be familiar. It's too dark to see, and they're drenched in the shadow of the two-story building that looms just in front of them.

There's a long, low rumble of thunder that makes the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and a few seconds later, a brilliant streak of pink lightning tears through the fabric of sky. Her head jerks up to look, and she watches as the lightning spider-webs into a pulsing network of pink capillaries, briefly illuminating the thick shroom of dark purple clouds suspended behind it. It's beautiful—but it does little to calm her nerves.

She whimpers when she feels a hand around her upper arm—the man from before—but she doesn't fight it, allowing herself to be pulled deeper into the shadows, down a flight of concrete steps. It's just her and two other men, now, and everyone else stays behind. She glances over her shoulder to look, the masked men talking amongst themselves where they've just gotten out of their vehicles. Some of them turn to look at her as she's led away, and her pulse pounds in her ears; she feels like she's being led straight into the underbelly of some great beast.

They stop at the bottom of the stairwell, and there's a series of beeps and clicks, an icy hiss as the door in front of them shifts and is pushed opened.

They step into a tight, narrow hallway with low-set ceilings, where a maze of crisscrossing pipes are exposed along the length of it. It's a long hallway, bathed in light that is blood red. She hears the door start to swing close behind them, the rush of muggy air from outside before the door shuts all the way, and the locking mechanism hisses into place.

The light feels thick—heavy, for some reason—and she can't help but study the way it bleeds over the skin of her bare arms, how it colors her clothes crimson. She's thrust into a memory she thought she had forgotten, of being in the darkroom at school during her junior year, some elective photography class she had taken, even though the technicality of working a camera had frustrated her. She remembers being in that darkroom and using the plastic tongs to gently transfer prints to the wash bath, remembers how the trays were so sticky and she always had trouble using the focus finder; all her film had turned out blurry. She'd hated being in that room, always so afraid of the shadows, of being in such a small, dark space where the door had to always remain shut, otherwise the film would be ruined. Maybe what she had really been afraid of was being locked in; maybe she was frightened by the way the chemicals in the trays looked like blood underneath that red light.

She's pulled forward, their footfalls soft against the carpet—red, like the kind they roll out at Hollywood premieres—and the silence is eerie, keeping her nerves on edge.

The hallway turns out to be a lot longer than she had initially thought, and it feels like an underground maze, the way she's led down a series of different hallways, all of them washed in that same red light.

It gets colder the deeper she goes, and by the end of it, her sweat has cooled and she's freezing, her teeth clicking together from the force of her shivering. She can't help it.

She can tell they're nearing the end when she sees the heavy-looking metal door up ahead. It's huge, like the door to a bank vault or something. She instinctively tries to dig her heels into the carpet, locking her knees, but the other man who had been following behind them gets on her other side and grabs that arm—roughly, without any regard for her cast—and then they're both hauling her forward.

"Wait, wait—" she manages to gasp, breathless. She starts to resist in earnest. "Wait, you don't have to do this, please!"

When they come to a stop just outside the door, the man to her left cocks his head at her, and she stares up into the marbled darkness of his black eyes, the way the red light is reflected in them. He looks like a demon.

"What is this place?" she breathes.

"Home."

She can hear the door unlocking from the other side in a series of metallic clicks. Her heart slams against her ribcage, pulse roaring in her ears. She feels like she's going to faint. She can feel her world narrowing to this one, solitary moment.

The vaulted door swings opens with a groan.

She blinks against fluorescents that are white-hot. Blinding. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust. She's pulled further into the room, her feet dragging behind her. She blinks rapidly against the brightness, her chest heaving, and when she lifts her head, she sees him.

"Hello, Alice."

Taylor's breath catches in her throat.

Oh, my God, she thinks.

The man grins at her through filthy, clenched teeth, more snarl than smile, and she can only stare, slack-jawed, as she watches him approach.

"What a delight it is to see you, my dear. You missed me, didn't you, Alice?"

Taylor stares, horrified. A rattling breath shudders through her lungs.

"You—you're not real. You can't be real," she whispers. She's shaking her head as he comes to a stop, stands right in front of her, where she can see all the nasty parts of him up close. His reptilian eyes. His sallow, wrinkled skin. The bulging pockets of his eyes. The putrid shade of him, like he'd bathed in something yellow. "You're—you're from my dream."

The man smiles even wider, baring teeth that are brown. "Oh, my dear Alice," he coos, "not a dream. Not a dream at all." He sounds pleased to tell her this—giddy, she thinks—and when he takes a step closer, clasps his hands behind his back and leans towards her, she flinches. They're almost the same height, but his lack of stature makes him no less terrifying. "I knew you would remember," he says. "How could you forget our time together? We were having such a lovely tea party. I know you remember the sweets. The cream." She watches as he leers at her, his eyes slowly trailing down her body before scaling back up to meet her eyes. "What else does my Alice remember?"

Taylor gapes at him.

"You—you're not real," she cries. She's shaking her head at him again, tears stinging behind her eyes. Mr. J had said it was all a dream, he'd told her that, kneeling at her bedside in the dark, urging her to lay back down, assuaging her worries even though she'd felt sick to her stomach, even though it hadn't felt like a dream at all. The memory of it had haunted her for weeks, after, and she'd never recalled a dream in such startling clarity, not unless it was a dream that was a memory, something that had actually happened, like when she used to dream of that night in the snow, the night she was ripped from Mr. J.

"Is that what he told you?" His voice slithers back to her, penetrating her thoughts, and she's forced to look at him. "Oh, the lies he must have fed to you," he pouts, looking stricken. "My poor, poor Alice, so confused!"

Taylor feels paralyzed—too dumbstruck to reply. He had lied to her. Mr. J had lied to her again. The tears come unbidden, and she can't stop them no matter how hard she tries, now matter how stupid she feels. The betrayal stings like an open sore, like a wound with a heartbeat. It's not the first time he's lied to her, not the first time she's tasted this sharp, bitter tang of betrayal, but it hurts like a first time anyway, even though it shouldn't. Even though she knows better.

"It hurts being lied to, doesn't it, Alice?"

Taylor looks at him through a blur of tears, afraid. It's like he's reading her mind. She wants to shake her head, but he reaches out instead, lays a heavy, sweaty palm on her cheek. She's too stunned to jerk away. The bulbous pad of his thumb strokes back and forth across the arch of her cheekbone, smearing a single tear.

"There, there," he murmurs. "No smoke and mirrors here, my dear, just the two of us—bound for Wonderland." She watches the way his eyes brighten, like he's picturing the whole thing in a myriad of fantastical shades. "Doesn't that sound nice?"

Wonderland.

Something lights up in her own eyes when he says it, and she remembers—the butterflies, that tree… and… and the woods, the tea party. The way he had touched her, wormed a thick finger inside her, and she had wanted him to. She had asked him for more.

She draws back from his hand, suddenly, horrified at the memory. Her heartbeat thuds in her ears, and she takes a trembling step backwards, away from him.

"You're remembering now, aren't you? I can see it in your eyes." He stalks towards her in a way that is predatory, makes the hairs on her arms stand on end even though she's drenched in a cool sweat. "Don't you want to go back, Alice? Don't you want to play?"

He's right in front of her now, invading her space—so close she can smell the metallic, coppery stench of him—and she puts up her arms as if to keep him at arm's length.

He grabs her first—the arm with the cast—startling her with his strength as he yanks her towards him. "This won't do," he mutters, his forehead creased with the deep pockets of several wrinkles, his mouth pulled into a frown. "No, no, this just won't do. My little Alice, hurt!" he coos. He fusses over her cast like an overbearing mother, turning her arm this way and that. She gasps and tries to pull back when he starts scratching over her cast with his jagged nails, clawing at it. "Can't you take this off?" He starts to tug on it—hard—and she cries out as she's yanked forward, almost into his chest.

"Ow!" she yelps.

He keeps tugging and tugging, with an insistence that terrifies her, a manic look in his eyes, like he won't stop tugging even if it means having to rip her arm clean out of its socket. She tries in vain to pull her arm back.

"Stop!" she shouts. "You're hurting me!"

"Oh!" he huffs, exasperated, giving up at last. When he releases her arm, she stumbles backwards with the force of her momentum. "No matter. No matter," he mutters. "We'll get that off of you one way or another, won't we, my dear?"

Taylor backs away slowly, tears in her eyes. "Please, please, I just want to go home. Please let me go home!"

"My dear, you don't even know what home is," he says. "You've been so brainwashed…." His eyes are feverish, and the yellowish tinge of his skin glistens with a thin sheen of sweat. She thinks he looks ill. "My poor dear, you think he cares for you, don't you? Oh, Alice…" he tsks, like this is an unfortunate oversight of her character, like she's fallen prey to some artifice she's been too stupid to see. "You know you belong in Wonderland. With me." When he reaches out for her again, she slaps his hand away without thinking.

"Don't touch me!"

She knows instantly from the look in his eyes that that was a mistake.

The shock of the back of his hand against the side of her face is enough to send her careening backwards, where she stumbles backwards and then lands on her side. She skids across the floor, her shoes squeaking on black marble tile. Something sharp had sliced across her cheek with the impact, and she looks up at where he stands above her, breathing hard, his face pinched in anger, and then her gaze lowers to his dangling fist, the gleam of something brass-colored glinting across his knuckles. She reaches up to touch her face with a trembling hand, can feel the warm trickle of blood there.

"Bad Alice!" he snaps. "Look what you made me do!"

Taylor cowers before him, afraid he'll hit her again, even while a terrified apology already begins to take shape on her tongue.

"I think that's enough foreplay for now, Tetch."

A smooth, deep voice rumbles from somewhere behind her, a voice that seems to settle over the entire room and blanket it. It's a commanding voice, the voice of a man with authority. Power. A voice that echoes off these strange marble walls, the same color as the floor. Taylor breathes hard through her nose, too frightened to look behind her to see who that voice belongs to.

"She's being insolent," Tetch growls.

"So she is," the voice agrees. She can hear him standing right behind her now. She's still too scared to move, too scared to scramble into a position that's less vulnerable, and she'd landed hard on her right arm, where it now throbs inside its cast.

"So she is…" the voice murmurs again. She keeps her eyes downcast as he circles around to her front, hears the click of his shiny dress shoes. Then she's catching a glimpse of his pinstripe pantlegs before he's suddenly lowering himself in front her, crouching at eyelevel. "Maybe she has a suggestion for what we can do to rectify that," he says.

Taylor sucks in a terrified breath, feels her heart jolt to an abrupt stop. He fills up all of her vision, the bulk of him, the smell of him, a sophisticated blend of scents, a heady, intoxicating musk—cologne that's expensive, probably worth more than her entire month's paycheck—and she stares, open-mouthed, at the rest of him. Dressed almost entirely in head-to-toe black save for his white dress shirt. His tie is black, too, tucked neatly into his buttoned jacket. She notices the clip attached to his tie, a thin, gold bar to hold it into place. He fills up his suit differently from how Mr. J fills out his. There's no sharpness to him, no negative space like there is with Mr. J. No slender, sinewy muscle. This man is all bulk, pure muscle and meat, bigger and wider throughout the chest. Strong arms and even stronger legs. He looks like he could break her in half. He looks like the kind of man who would enjoy breaking her in half.

And the mask, black—skeletal—gleams underneath the heat of all these lights, like it's been freshly polished. It adheres to his face in a way that looks as if it's apart of him, like it's melted right onto his skin. It molds itself over his head, almost like a helmet, molding itself all the way to the back of his neck, concealing his ears and any hair that he might have. For all intents and purposes, his entire head looks like a charred skull.

But it's the mask's ghoulish, stretched-out grin that is perhaps the most unnerving part of him—and those white teeth, looking far too glossy to be considered fake.

When he cocks his head to the side to look at her, she finally lifts her own eyes to meet his—staring at the white orbs that almost appear as if they're floating around inside his skull-like mask, like doll's eyes. But his eyes are hard—unforgiving—and his irises are just as black as his suit. It looks unnatural. Wrong.

"It really is you, isn't it?" he says. She can't identify the emotion in his voice when he says it—maybe fascination, maybe something bordering on incredulity—and when he reaches out, grabs her chin between his forefinger and thumb, she's too stunned to react. The pads of his fingers are rough. Calloused. She understands immediately he's a man not unaccustomed to getting his hands dirty—not unlike Mr. J.

He turns her head from side to side, slowly, taking all of her in, and she holds her breath while he does it, too scared to breathe, trying not to make a sound as his eyes rakes over her flesh, cataloguing her features, taking inventory of her. Sizing her up. She closes her eyes the longer her stares, feels hot tears slipping past her closed lids. Is he going to kill her? Or will Mr. Hatter—"Tetch"—kill her first?

When he releases her chin, she opens her eyes, watery with more unshed tears, and her gaze slides straight towards his terrifying grin.

"Look at you," he says, and this time she knows he's intrigued. "The little girl meant to burn in the fire… all grown up now." He shifts a little on his haunches. Makes a show of pulling on his cufflinks. Straightening them out. Then he rolls his eyes up to meet hers. "What fortuitous circumstances."

Taylor frowns at him—meant to burn?—but doesn't have time to ask what he means, is not sure she could even if she wanted to.

"I told you it was her," Tetch interjects from behind him, irritated. "I told you."

The masked man finally looks away from her, keeping his eyes on her until the last second, until he cranes his neck to look behind him. Taylor notices for the first time the ruined flesh that snakes out from underneath his mask, the shiny, scarred and puckered skin that creeps along the side of his neck, down his throat, and disappears into the collar of his shirt. Is that from the fire he was talking about? Or is it from something else?

When he turns back to look at her, he catches where her gaze had been, and she can hear the smile in his voice when he addresses her.

"Little girl doesn't remember the city set ablaze in her honor…" He hums when sees the confusion in her eyes. "Mr. J has been busy brainwashing, hasn't he?"

Taylor's whole body seizes at the mention of not just the Joker, but Mr. J. They know about him—they know she calls him that. They know about they two of them. Their relationship. Is that why she's here? Are they seeking revenge against something Mr. J had done?

The masked man shifts closer, a new fire taking shape in his eyes. "What exactly did he tell you about that night, I wonder? That the two of you were just going out for a little evening stroll? Watching fireworks?"

When Taylor doesn't respond, her eyes darting between him and Tetch, the masked man leans over her and reaches forward with a speed that startles her, violently gripping her jaw with one hand and yanking her upper body towards him.

"I believe I just asked you a question," he says. "Or are you deaf?"

Taylor's mouth opens and then shuts. She stares into his black eyes, trying to blink back tears.

"I'm sorry!" she gasps. "I—I don't know about a fire."

The masked man searches her eyes, looking for a trace of a lie, and when he finds none, he releases her jaw.

"Mister Sionis, I think that's quite enough!" Tetch is suddenly surrounding her, fussing over her like a worried mother. "Get up, my dear. Off the floor. Dust yourself off now. This is very unbecoming for a little lady."

Taylor's cheeks burn in embarrassment as she wipes at her face with the back of her hand, shakily gets to her feet and smooths down her skirt. She keeps her eyes trained on 'Sionis' as he rises to his full height, towering over both of them, as Tetch leans in close and begins to dab at her face with a handkerchief retrieved from one of his pockets, wiping away the blood and tears smeared along her cheeks.

"There, there," he coos. "We must look the part before we can start to play."

Taylor opens her mouth to respond, to tell him she doesn't want to play—whatever that means—but another voice interjects before she can.

"Hey, boss? Incoming."

Sionis's head jerks up at the warning, and Taylor turns to look at the man standing next to the giant steel door just as all the locks begin to click open.

For the first time since entering, she finally takes in the rest of the room, scanning over it in two quick sweeps. Her eyes trail over the long black table in the middle of the room with adjoining chairs, and then the lone, overlarge desk at the very end of the room, like the head of the table without actually being apart of it. The vault-door to her left, and then a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that stretches along the opposite wall on her right. It's a sparse-looking shelf, and most of the books appear to be binders, all shades of navy and maroon, very neatly arranged, not a thing out of place. The room is devoid of much else, not even a plant—not that she thinks it would survive in a room devoid of windows and any natural form of sunlight. She thinks it must be a conference or meeting room of sorts, some kind of place of business—and that bookshelf looks suspiciously like the kind that might open into a makeshift door, lead to a secret supervillain lair. She's seen enough movies to know.

She counts the men lined against the wall—three of Tetch's men, she thinks, if the rabbit masks are anything to go by—all of with machine guns slung over the shoulders—and two belonging to the man that Tetch had referred to as 'Sionis'. Those men are wearing similar black masks to his, though they're not nearly as frightening or realistic looking.

And then there's one more.

She shifts her focus to the man near the edge of the door—the one who had just spoken—and thinks that he might be looking at her. He's dressed differently than all the others—wearing black jeans and a brown leather jacket—and there's a red helmet pulled over his head, shielding his face. The helmet has two narrow, black slits for eyes, and no mouth. And the mask is tapered near the jaw, giving him a chiseled look. She thinks the mask is slightly less frightening than the others, but she still recoils at it all the same.

Her eyes dart back to the door when it swings slowly open. She can feel her heart clenching, the way it vaults up into the high part of her throat as she waits to see who is on the other side.

She knows she's hoping for Mr. J, more desperate than she's ever been for him to rescue her and save her from this nightmare, but instead it's another man she doesn't recognize, a pale, bald-headed man in a black suit. He grins when he sees her, and even from the short distance that separates him, she can see his teeth are sharp. Pointed.

"Getting started without me?" His voice is gruff, with an edge of sophistication, a curious blend of sandpaper and silk.

"Not without our biggest investor," Sionis says, turning towards him. He clasps his hands behind his back, straightens back the broad line of his shoulders. He almost sounds curious when he asks, "How much did you pay for her?"

The bald-headed man comes a bit closer, his cane plinks each time it hits the floor. Taylor doesn't miss the limp in his right leg. Looks painful.

"Eight-hundred grand."

She gapes at the amount, her eyes widening, but Sionis only scoffs.

"And it didn't occur to you to just take her?" He glances at Taylor, and even masked, she can tell he's unimpressed with her. She looks up at him and catches the way his eyes sweep over her now that she's standing—up and down, and then back up again. She hears his disdain. "Hardly seems worth the investment."

The bald man seems unruffled by the criticism. "Cleaner, to do it this way," he says.

"Yes," Sionis agrees. "We all know how you like to keep your hands clean, Oswald."

The sarcasm is not lost on her, and it's not lost on 'Oswald', either, not if the slimy grin he shoots Sionis is anything to go by.

"She's here in one piece, isn't she? No bloodshed. No gunfire. No Joker. I would have paid ten million if that's what was necessary to knock him down a peg." He leans to one side a bit—favoring his strong leg, the left one, and stares hard at Roman. "It was an easy negation," he says after a pause, like maybe he's choosing what information he selects to reveal very carefully. "We will have tripled that amount in less than a day—assuming your technology works. You don't exactly have a clean track record of successful business ventures, now, do you, Roman?"

Roman Sionis. Oswald. Tetch. Who are all of these people? Taylor's mind is racing as she tries desperately to process the events that are unfolding around her, trying to piece together all the pieces that have led to this moment. Trying to figure out what it all means, why she's here. She'd never once heard Mr. J mention any of these men, never seen their names written on any of the papers scattered along his desk whenever she'd snooped through some of them. Just how deeply involved are Hank, Ruby, and Ben in all of this ? And what 'technology' was the bald-headed man talking about?

Even through the mask, she can tell Sionis is annoyed. He cocks his head at Oswald in a way that makes her spine curl.

"I think your little guinea pig here will take to the technology nicely," he says, even as Taylor's heart gives a sharp jolt at his words. Guinea pig? Guinea pig for what? "Unless, of course, you'd like to volunteer to test it first?"

Oswald bares his teeth in a placid, cool grin. "Think I'll just watch." He makes his way towards the desk along the back wall, and she catches Sionis rolls his eyes.

When he turns back to look at her, she's already staring up at him. Hard to look away from that mask. The thick, ropey vessel of scars along his neck. She flinches when he takes a step closer, invades her space. She can't help it when she draws her shoulders up to ears, stares into the hollowed out sockets of the mask's eyeholes, searching for the whites of his eyes.

"What an unlucky day for you," he says, lowly, just loud enough for the two of them to hear. "Sold to the highest bidder. Seems your fortuitous circumstances have finally bled dry."

Taylor stares up at him, trembling, her knees threatening to buckle from just the weight of his gaze alone. She can feel it on her, the blackness of his stare, how it penetrates some place deep inside her—how he doesn't even care that it does. He doesn't care about her at all. He doesn't care whether she lives or dies. She can see that in his eyes. And she knows.

"Gentlemen!" When Tetch suddenly clasps his hands, she jumps and tears her gaze from Sionis, looking at the smaller man who had been so quiet, standing in her peripheral this whole time. "If that's quite enough dillydallying," he says, "I think it's time for tea."

Taylor sees his hands are shaking as he reaches into his ratty coat and retrieves a silver flask the size of her hand. It's ornate looking—beautiful, even—with curving vines and flowers carved in smooth grooves along its sides. "I've been very rude, my dear, I know you must be parched." He unscrews the cap for her and reaches for her left hand, makes her hold the flask as he closes his own hand around hers to keep hers in place.

"Here we are…" he says, excited. "It's not hot, my dear. We remember how you burned your tongue last time, don't we?" He giggles at this, as if delighted by the memory, but Taylor only squirms and presses her lips shut tight as he brings the flask to her lips. "Take a sip, now, Alice." When she looks up, her brows furrowed together in panic, he frowns at her. "Don't make me have to force you. That would be entirely unpleasant."

"P—please," she whimpers. "Please, I—I don't want to. Please don't make me," she whimpers. What if it's poisoned? Is this how he plans to kill her?

"Now, now, my dear, don't make this harder than it has to be," he says, gritting his teeth. He aims for saccharine pleasantry, but she can hear the hard edge to his voice. His obvious impatience. "Be a good Alice and do as I say."

She stares at him—at the warning in his eyes, the promise of pain; she can still feel the way that metal thing on the bridge of his knuckles had viciously cut across her cheek—and she knows she has no choice but to do what he wants.

He makes her lift her left arm, squeezing his fingers tighter around hers where they grip the flask, and she has no choice but to drink as he brings the flask to her mouth.

It tastes earthy—brown—more bitter than she thought it would be, but she swallows it down, even when some dribbles from the corner of the mouth and down her chin. Her throat bobs again and again as she swallows, trying to get it down as fast as she can so she doesn't choke.

She glances at him from the corner of her eyes as she drinks, terrified by the way he fixes her with wide, ravenous eyes, standing too close, his nostrils flaring in his excitement.

"Just a little more, Alice…."

He tips the flask further up, makes her finish the whole thing, and when he finally pulls away, freeing her hand, she drops the flask. It hits the floor with a metal clatter, and the way the sound reverberates in her ears is strange, like she's in an echo chamber all the sudden.

She can hear her own heartbeat suddenly, too, so loud and so close it's as if she had pulled it from her chest and was holding it up to her ear, like the way you would hold a seashell to your ear, listen to the memory of waves crashing around inside.

She glances up—eyes darting around the room in a panic—confused by the way her vision is starting to fuzz around the edges, by the way the colors of the room are beginning to change, her vision seeming to brighten, like she's looking through a camera lens and someone's just changed the filter.

"What—what's happening to me?" she whimpers.

She looks towards the bald-headed man, all the way on the other side of the room, and then towards the men in rabbit masks lined up against the wall. Her eyes widen when she realizes they're no longer men, but actual rabbits—extra tall ones, standing on their hind legs, wearing clothes, of all things.

She blinks rapidly, her gaze shifting towards the man in the black mask, only, he's no longer the man from before, either, but a giant playing card, a king of spades, with arms and legs. His body is razor thin—where are his organs? His bones?—and his head somehow sits at the top of the card, bare-faced and mangled, free of his mask, but still that same, malevolent smile from before, teeth bared, gleaming and bright.

She backs away from him, slowly—unsure—but is startled when she backs into something hard. She spins around, tilts her head back as her eyes slide up the trunk of an impossibly large tree, all the way up, into the blossoming network of branches and leaves, a verdancy that's mesmerizing. She blinks, then instinctively closes her eyes against the warm, tender beams of sunlight that filter through the bed of leaves nestled above, feels the sun on the back of her lids, warmth that bleeds all over, lays its hands on her skin in a way that's comforting. Familiar.

The longer she stands there, the better she feels, her anxiety falling away, dissolving into nothing. She can feel the sunlight in her blood, moving underneath her skin, penetrating muscle and bone, sunlight that fills up the hollow cavities of her heart and lungs, occupying empty space. Warmth that fills her from the inside out.

She laughs.

She feels impossible. Bright.

She blinks open her eyes when she hears the chittering, playful melody of birdsong, the gentle trickle of a nearby stream.

She turns around, slowly, and is awestruck as an entire forest sprouts to life right before her eyes, like one of those pop-out books where the cardboard unfolds into something magical, a paper world you can reach out and touch. She watches as a carpet of thick, green grass unrolls right in front of her, trees shooting up from the ground, and flowers—so many flowers—slithering up through the soil, daisies and roses and petunias, foxgloves and daffodils and other flowers she's never seen before—colors she's never seen before. Some of the flowers even seem to have faces, little eyes and mouths and noses. Has the world ever been this bright? This beautiful?

Her gaze slides up again, towards a sky the color of robin's eggs, sky that's dotted with the fluffiest white clouds she think she's ever seen, soft as cotton candy. She lowers her head, blinking through the grass, towards the soft trickle of a nearby stream. Her eyes follow the stream all the way to its source, towards a small pool that seems to glitter, mist rising from its surface and birds perched along its rim, chattering away. There's a tall, thin waterfall sandwiched between a lush cliffside, a cascading flora of vines and exotic flowers. The rush of water is practically music to her ears, and she wants to go to it, strip off her clothes and sink straight into that azure pool, reach out and stick her arm through that waterfall, touch what's on the other side. Maybe dive underneath it, find a cave of secret jewels and treasures. She can't help but smile. She thinks it might be the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

"Are you glad to be home, Alice?" There's a voice in her ear, a familiar cadence. "Are you glad to be in Wonderland?"

She turns to face him, though her gaze is still elsewhere, too busy watching the forest continue to unfold around her. Tears are shining in her eyes, and she can smell it—Wonderland—the fresh flowers, the green earth. Her mouth full of strawberries and sugar and sun, a sticky, candied-sweetness that coats the roof of her mouth, beds itself down on her tongue. She licks her lips and tastes peaches.

"Yes, Mr. Hatter," she says, full of awe. "I—I love it here."

Mr. Hatter smiles, and when she finally looks at him, she is immediately drawn to his eyes, where the irises seem to swirl with color, like she's looking straight down the lens of a kaleidoscope. Like standing on the edge of the ocean, watching the waves, only, the waves are sun-tinted, yellow as goldenrod. Bright as a sunflower. She stares, and stares, and stares, and she can't look away.

"My good little Alice," Mr. Hatter purrs. He reaches out to touch her face, her cheek slotting into the palm of his hand, and she nuzzles against it, something telling her that she should. That he likes that. That she wants that. She keeps her eyes on his, notices the way they darken a little, narrowing, and she instinctively steps a little closer, like she wants to get closer to that darkness, step inside of it. "It's time to play now," he says.

She smiles at him. Alice would like that very much.

---

Jesus Christ, Ressling thinks. Out of all of the Joker's plans so far, this one has to be the fucking worst.

He watches Taylor teeter dumbly back and forth from one hallucination to the next, wonders exactly what it is she thinks she's seeing, what sort of opulent illusion Jervis Tetch has carefully orchestrated for her. When Tetch lays hands on her, cups her cheek with one meaty palm, forces her to meet his gaze, his eyes are glowing and bright red, pulsing at regular intervals—Black Mask's new little gadget. Complicated technology—and more powerful, too—and there's less risk of interruption of the gamma rays now that the headbands are no longer involved. The headbands had been rather volatile modes of mind control to begin with—and also had severely limited the clientele.

With Black Mask's, technology, however, the effects are more permanent, and eventually, Ressling discovers, there is no need for the gamma rays at all after a certain amount of time has passed—how much time that has to pass, though, remains to be seen. It's part of the reason why they're all gathered here today.

He feels sorry for her—he always feels sorry for her—and thinks that she has some of the worst luck he's ever seen. And he's seen his fair share of downtrodden, sorry sons of bitches. Men who've lost everything, women who've had every freedom stripped from them. Kids barely on the cusp of twelve, gunned down in shopping mall parking lots. The addicted, the indebted, the poor, the inebriated. The terminally ill, the crazy, the abused, the corrupt, the greedy. Everyone's got a story, and Gotham City is home to some of the worst.

Sometimes he's not so sure he believes in luck, though—good or bad. Maybe she was just handed a shitty deck of cards. Life's like that, sometimes—his was like that, for a while, until he figured out how to play the game. It is just a game. Maybe she'd learn that eventually—if she lived long enough to figure that out on her own.

He still remembers the last time, being gunned down in Tetch's laboratory while Joker fled with Taylor in tow. Remembers the call he received days later—Joker's new plan, so meticulously-mapped that Ressling almost had to shudder in disgust when Joker had laid out some of its more excruciating plot points and details. And then two days after that, getting this stupid fucking neck tattoo, the swirl—it's real, he shits you not—a brand of loyalty to Tetch. Gotta prove it's real. Gotta earn his trust—that's what Greg had said.

Greg Kapitshki. Thirty-three. One-hundred and seventy-six pounds. Five foot, eleven inches. Brown eyes and brown hair. Loyal Tetch follower for three years. No kids. Girlfriend left him about a year into the Tetch thing. Tetch feeds his heroin addiction, which Ressling finds out after several nights of tailing the guy to whatever strip club he's chosen to get his rocks off in for that night, and there's a lot of them—Chix on Dix seems to be his favorite, and he's got a little thing going with one of the girls there. Sometimes he pays her with some of his dope, and they're both happy.

Ressling traces him back to a string of unassuming jobs—gas station clerk in high school, a short stint at some Methadone clinic on the South Side, and then to some LLC in the Narrows that, upon closer inspection, raises more than a few brows to anyone who would bother looking long enough at their books. Some shipping company that operates near the docks. It's too suspicious not to be a front for something else. Drugs, maybe, but personally Ressling thinks they're washing cash—Gotham is an easy place to do it, and the Feds just can't keep up with the sheer volume of money that filters through the city's cracks. They try to mark the bills, but there's ways around it. There always is.

It's harder to infiltrate Tetch's inside circle than Ressling thought it would be. Tetch—despite the illusion of him being bat-shit crazy, a bit of a loose cannon—runs a tight ship, even tighter than what Ressling had anticipated. He explains as much to the Joker, who tells him the little weasel has to run such a tight ship so he's not gunned down by his own men, whose balls are twice Tetch's size. It's clear to Ressling that Joker still has residual beef with Tetch from that incident a couple year's prior. And then, when Taylor was taken, it had fueled a quiet sort of rage in the Joker that Ressling had never seen in him before, something that, if he's honest, unsettled Ressling to his core. He's seen the depths of depravity to which the Joker is willing to sink—he's played significant roles in aiding that depravity himself—but this? This is an act so clearly spurred by revenge that it has Ressling more on-edge than usual. This one could be messy—and so far it's been a shit-show to watch unfold, even if it's going exactly the way Joker said it would.

Taylor's new gig at the diner turned out to the be the perfect opportunity to hit back at Tetch, and Ressling laid into his research hard the moment she was hired. It was a surprise to discover the little operation they were running—the girls and the trafficking—and when an 'anonymous' tip from Ressling to Tetch revealed the whereabouts of Taylor's location, Tetch was all too eager to snatch her back up. Finish what he had started.

Ressling pulled all the right strings to set the gears into motion, like he always does. And Joker did what Joker does best—fan the flames of the fire that Ressling had started.

It was easy enough to track Taylor from work to home, follow her movements around town like he always does. The car accident had thrown a wrench into the plans—but Joker was quick to revise.

Ressling tries not to think about the beating unless he has to. He's been complicit in far worse things—her rape, for one thing—but the way she had looked at him after he had dropped the belt, when all was said and done… he thinks about that. He can't not. He wishes it didn't eat him up the way it does—but something about her gets under his skin in a way his conscience never really has, prods at the part of him that urges him to be a good man—to do the right thing—but then what is the mark of a good man? He thinks he forfeited the right to being a 'good man' a long time ago. The line between right and wrong are so blurred now, too. Sometimes you don't have the luxury of choosing to do the right thing—not when your survival hangs in the balance. Not when the lives of the people you care about are on the line. What the fuck is the 'right thing' to do then?

Joker would say it's a dog-eat-dog-world; he's not wrong.

Tetch is telling Taylor to get on her hands and knees, and she obeys immediately, without hesitation. Something clenches in Ressling's stomach as he watches her sink to the floor. He can tell from the way her hands clench against the hard floor that she must think she's gripping at something—carpet? Grass?

Black Mask seems particularly interested in this new unfolding of events, and as Tetch backs slowly away from Taylor—making sure to keep eye-contact—Black Mask ambles up to her from behind, hands in his pockets. Casual. He approaches slowly, and no one stops him—not even her—when he lifts up the back of her skirt with the toe of his shoe.

"What's this?" he says, in a tone that suggests he already knows.

Ressling almost flinches, but he works his mouth instead, shifting his mask around a little, like maybe his jaw itched. He sees the aftermath of his cruelty, and a part of him thinks—hopes, maybe—that it was a kindness that he got to do it instead of Joker. He's seen the way Joker's beat people—some to death—with a recklessness that's blood-curdling, worse than anything Ressling's ever seen. He wants to believe it was a kindness that he was the one to hurt Taylor, in the end—even if it humiliated her. He knows that was the point anyway. It was never about pain. Not really.

Black Mask hums low in his throat as he stares, his eyes tracking over the back of her ass and thighs with interest.

"Looks like someone's been very naughty," he muses.

Tetch's nose twitches in that way it does when he's irritated, Ressling notices, and he growls out a warning in the form of Sionis's first name.

"Relax, Tetch. Just testing my product. Why don't you sit back and watch?"

Tetch's nose twitches again, but he doesn't say anything. Ressling notes this exchange with interest, starting to recognize the power imbalance of this weird little triangle that's formed.

For his part, Penguin remains quiet, his hands folded in his lap as he leans back in his desk chair, watching everything from across the room, like he's just interested in seeing how things play out, and then he'll react.

When Black Mask snaps his fingers, his right-hand—the one in the red helmet—jumps to attention. Black Mask nods towards the clear pitcher of water on the table, instructs the man to pour a glass.

Seeming a little confused by the instruction, the man does what he asks, hands it to him and then takes his place along the wall with the rest of them.

"Thank you, my boy," Sionis says.

"Roman, what are you doing," Tetch sputters, red-faced and buzzing with impatience.

Black Mask doesn't deign to address him with an answer, and instead, he circles around to Taylor's front, crouches onto his haunches in front of her. When Taylor's gaze breaks from Tetch's long enough to look in Black Mask's eyes, he sees that he's just activated the technology that Tetch had been using.

Taylor gapes up at him from where she's still on all-fours, and Black Mask tips the lip of the glass just slightly—just enough for the water to pour out in a slow, steady stream as it splatters onto the floor, creating a small puddle.

"Oops," he says, dangling the now half-empty glass between his spread thighs after the stream's stopped. Ressling can hear the malice in his voice when Black Mask says, "Lick it up."

Taylor doesn't wait. She lowers her head and starts lapping at the water near Black Mask's shoe, the same one he had used to lift up the back of her skirt. The irony's not lost on him.

"Would you look at that," Black Mask says. "She's almost as good at this as you are, Red." His gaze flits up to stare at the one in red helmet, and Ressling can tell from the way 'Red' shifts his shoulders back—barely perceptible—that the comment strikes a nerve.

This is the thing that set Ressling's nerves alight almost more than anything else—his inability to dig up any information on the one Black Mask simply refers to as "Red". No other aliases. No address. No friends. In a city this large, there's always someone willing to tattle—for a fee, of course—but Ressling finds nobody, not even neighbor. Even in Ressling's near-unlimited database and infinite resources, there is nothing to be dug up on 'Red'. Where did Black Mask find him? Why is he so hard to track? How long had he been working for Sionis?

Ressling had spent hours digging up the dirt on David Li—Black Mask's other right-hand, the 'businessman', the one Black Mask had trusted with his financial assets and other dealings—but there is virtually nothing on Red. It doesn't make sense.

He's almost certain this is a pitfall that will later come back to bite him in the ass.

Black Mask chuckles, pulling Ressling from his thoughts as he redirects his attention back to Taylor.

"There you go," Sionis encourages, as she continues to lap at the floor. "Just like that." He reaches forward with his free hand and tucks a strand of her har behind her ear as she works, and Ressling takes a moment to surreptitiously peer down at his watch, where he has his hand casually resting on the M249 slung across his chest.

Taylor lifts her head when she finishes, her chin wet, water sliding down her neck, and if Sionis's creepy fucking mask wasn't already fixed with a permanent grin, Ressling is sure he'd be already be grinning anyway.

"Very good," he rumbles. "You like to do what you're told, don't you?"

She swallows as she stares at him. Eagerly nods her head.

"If you're finished," Tetch says suddenly, his voice high and shrill, strung-out with exasperation, "my Alice and I have much catching up to do."

Black Mask cranes his head to look at Tetch, very still for a moment, and then he slowly rises to his full height, leaving the glass of water on the floor.

"All yours," he says, reaching up to fix his tie, straightening it. "Tetch."

Tetch's eyes dart eagerly to Taylor, and he snaps his fingers to get her attention. Her head jerks in his direction, as if she were a dog responding to a high-pitch sound.

"Come here, Alice," he instructs, once he has her attention, his voice stern. "Crawl."

This time it takes a moment for her to obey, like maybe she's fighting some natural instinct, some ingrained desire to resist, but eventually she does as she's told, crawling towards him on hands and knees as Tetch grins. There's hushed chuckling next to him—the two asshats on the other side of the door, two of Black Mask's faceless men—and the sound draws Black Mask's immediate attention, his head snapping towards them in a way that immediately shuts both of them up.

"Gentlemen," he booms, "we're in the presence of a lady…." His shoes click with purpose against the tile as he stalks towards them. When he's close enough, he reaches forward with blinding speed, grabbing one of them by the neck with one hand, and then angling back his other arm to send a hard punch to the underside of the man's jaw. Ressling hears the blow when it makes contact, the sound the mask makes at is cracks against the man's face. "—It might behoove you to act like it."

Ressling doesn't give into the temptation to look, even when the man crumples to the floor in a groan of pain. Instead he keeps his head forward, chin up. He's heard about Black Mask's temper, the speed at which he goes through men. Now he knows the rumors are true.

Taylor has finished her slow crawl to Tetch, and he's beaming down at her when she stops at his feet, sits back on her calves and looks up at him.

"Very good, little Alice," he coos, bending down to pat her head affectionately. "Very good."

Ressling's throat bobs when he swallows, and the sweat gathering underneath this stupid mask is making him itch. This has gone on much longer than he thought it would. They didn't discuss what Ressling would do in the event that Joker was detained. He's not sure if he can stop what's about to happen if Joker doesn't show up. He can't fight all of these men by himself—and he's more than certain he doesn't want to have to try; he's not eager to have Black Mask's technology tested on him, too, already unsure of the full extent of its effects, and just how long they last.

Ressling goes to check his watch again—surely they can't wait much longer—when there's an explosion of rippling sound.

The vaulted door to his right blows open in a shower of steel and disrupted marble that rocks the entire room, startling even him.

About fucking time, he thinks.

Both of Black's men are taken down in the resulting debris, and one of Tetch's. Ressling shoots Tetch's other man point black—guy never saw it coming—but before he can even set sights on Red, Red already has a pistol pointed just inches from his face. Ressling wonders if Red had known this whole time that he was the infiltrator.

Still, Ressling takes quick stock of the room. Red isn't going to do anything without his boss's say so, anyway. Taylor and Tetch are both far enough away from the explosion that they're uninjured from the debris, and Black Mask is miraculously unscathed, even though he was knocked to the floor from the force of the explosion. Penguin, for his part, is standing now, too, but remains behind his desk. Ressling thinks that maybe he doesn't look as surprised as he should.

"You said he wouldn't find us!" Black Mask roars. The dust from the debris hasn't even settled yet. But they all know who it is, especially as more masked men start filling up the doorway—men in clown masks.

Joker is waltzing through the chaos of the door he's just blown to smithereens, skipping over a crumble of loose rocks.

"Ta, ta, ta," he hums, under his breath. He enters in all of his usual style as smoke settles around him from the explosion. He adopts an expression of mock surprise as his gaze slides over the remaining occupants in the room. "Well," he exclaims, "What a fun get-together! If I had known about this little supervillain circlejerk, I would've brought snacks."

Ressling is relieved to see him. It's an odd feeling—but now things can continue as Joker had planned—unless Joker has some additional tricks up his sleeves he didn't have the foresight to convey to Ressling. It wouldn't be the first time he didn't reveal all of his cards.

"Always a fucking entrance with you," Black Mask grimaces, dusting off the sleeves of his suit. "You always have to blow the goddamn place sky-high."

"Not high enough," Joker says, deadpan. "You're still here."

"Joker!" Tetch hisses. "You just can't leave well enough alone!"

The Joker turns towards Tetch, awarding him with an exaggerated frown. "Still hung up over our last little playdate?" he coos. "You know I had to come for what's mine," he says, darkly.

If he takes a moment to glance at Taylor, here, Ressling can't tell for sure.

"And yet here she is," Penguin says, stepping out from behind his desk to enter the conversation at last. "Bought and paid for. Seems to me like you just can't keep your hands on her, Joker. Why is that, I wonder?"

Ressling senses that Penguin knows more than he's letting on, that perhaps that's why he's been so unusually quiet this whole time.

Ressling shoots a glance back at where Red still has his pistol pointing in Ressling's face, his arm unwavering. Red watches him like a hawk. Not dead yet, he thinks.

The Joker's grin doesn't meet his eyes as he glances at Penguin from over his shoulder. "You know teenagers," he says, "so hard to parent. Always sneaking out at night, lying about where they've been… running with the wrong crowd." He tsks, like this is truly unfortunate.

"A shame you can't take better care of your toys, Joker. But I would expect nothing less from you."

The Joker turns towards Black Mask, grinning. "Ooh," he purrs. "I know you know a thing or two about toys, too, don't you, Roman?"

Something about that seems to catch Roman's interest, and Ressling notices the way Black Mask keeps very still.

When Joker cranes his neck to look behind him, Ressling is startled to find Joker looking right at him, and then at Red.

"Jason," he says, suddenly, "what a delightful surprise we get to meet like this. Though I think I prefer the version where I beat you to death with a crowbar."

Ressling frowns behind his mask as he watches Red's arm falters a bit. Jason? How could the Joker possibly know his name? Ressling had tried for weeks to gather intel and had come back with nothing—and the Joker knew his goddamn name? And what is with the crowbar? Do they know each other?

"Apparently I'm not the only one picking up little orphans off the street," the Joker says, sounding entirely too giddy, glancing at Black Mask. "Tell me, does he call you daddy?"

Ressling looks towards Red again, looking him up and down, remembering the way Black Mask had called him "my boy" earlier. Was he really just an orphan kid? Had Black Mask gone through the trouble of scraping him from the system? Is that why Ressling couldn't trace him? And had Sionis adopted him or something?

Black Mask pushes his shoulders back a bit, watching the Joker closely. "You're just full of fancy parlor tricks, aren't you," he says. It's not a question.

The Joker hums in agreement. "Yes," he agrees, excited. "And for my next trick—" he redirects his attention towards Tetch, stalking slowly in his direction, "—making you disappear."

Something about the Joker's appearance must startle Taylor, still knelt at Tetch's feet, and she whimpers when she sees him approach. She tries to crawl closer to Tetch, but doesn't make it far. It's the first time the Joker's laid eyes on her since he entered, and reaches down to grab her by the front of her shirt, hoists her towards him just enough to send her sliding across the floor with her momentum as he tosses her away, so she's at a safe distance.

Tetch is unmoving, staring up at the Joker with his glowing, red eyes—reactivating the hypnotizing agent as the Joker advances on him—but the agent has no effect. Even from across the room, Ressling can see that Tetch is starting to panic.

"N—now, now, Joker," Tetch starts, a tremble in his voice, "I'm sure you don't want to be doing that," he says, the Joker looming above him.

"Don't I?" The Joker cocks his head, just an arm's length away as he stares down at the smaller man. "You didn't really think I'd be susceptible to your little mind control rays, did you?" He frowns, brows pushed together as if having to simplify a convoluted thought, as if explaining it to a small child. "I mean, after that first time, you know I couldn't take any chances." The corner of his mouth lifts into a little smirk, then, and he bows at the waist so that he and Tetch can be eye-level. "And Mr. Cobblepot here was just thrilled to share your plans with me after you proved what a bumbling. Little. Imbecile you are."

The Joker glances over his shoulder to gauge the reactions of both Black Mask and Penguin, a shit-eating grin on his face as he does, and Black Mask shoots Penguin what Ressling can only assume is a look of pure rage.

"You're working with him?" Sionis roars.

"He was the biggest investor," Penguin coolly replies.

"Jesus," Black Mask grits. He reaches into his jacket for his gun, levels it at the Joker's head and cocks it. "And what's to stop me from just blowing your goddamn brains out right now?" he barks.

"Well then you wouldn't get your money's worth, would you?" the Joker replies.

When he turns back to face Tetch, something noxious and white is suddenly sprayed in the Joker's face, Tetch taking a few stumbling steps back, even while the Joker advances on him through the smoke. He waits for it to clear before he addresses him.

"Little Hatter… you know that doesn't work on me either," he grins.

In the next moment, the Joker is reaching forward with one had, his hand around Tetch's neck, the other forcing a dark vial into Tetch's open mouth.

"Taste of your own medicine now, little Hatter," he snarls. "Drink up."

Tetch gurgles around the liquid as he's forced to swallow it down, and the Joker's grip around his neck painful, near suffocating. He grins as he forces Tetch through it.

When it's empty, the Joker lets the glass vial fall to the floor, where it shatters at their feet. He lets go of Tetch's neck as the man stumbles back, and Ressling can tell it's already having an affect by the way Tetch is rapidly blinking, the world around him starting to reshape.

"Are you in Wonderland now, Jervis?"

It takes a moment for him to reply, his eyes widening, pupils dilated, full of some unseen wonder. His lips curve into a smile.

"Yes," he gasps. "Yes!"

The Joker bares his teeth in a smile. "Y'know," he says, keeping his voice low, where Ressling has to strain to hear. "A little bunny rabbit's just informed me the Queen of Hearts will be here any minute… and all these roses are still white." As he says this, he pulls a white rose from his pocket, carefully tucks it inside the V-shaped crevice of Tetch's paisley vest, "And you and I both know the Queen hates white roses." The Joker shakes his head, urging Tetch to do the same.

"Yes," Tetch agrees, his eyes widening in horror at the very thought. He nods, too. "Yes…."

"We wouldn't want to displease her, now, would we?"

Tetch shakes his head 'no' this time, staring up at the Joker like he's enraptured, clearly under the same hallucinogen Taylor had been, perhaps one even more potent.

"I think if we hurry," the Joker says conspiratorially, reaching into his jacket again, into his arsenal of weapons, "we can paint these roses red before she gets here. What do you think?"

Tetch nods, reaching for the proffered knife—his paintbrush. "Yes," he says, overeager. "Yes! Yes!"

The Joker reaches forward, pulls open Tetch's large overcoat, then rips open the buttons on his vest with quick, nimble fingers. The buttons scatter across the floor. Tetch's undershirt follows, more buttons spilling across the floor, lost, as the Joker rucks up the bottom half of his shirt from where it had been tucked into Tetch's pants. He reveals a pale chest and rounded belly, both sprouting with thin patches of white-blond hair.

"There we are," the Joker says, "and now for the paint." He grabs Tetch's hand that's holding the knife, maneuvers the sharp end in so it's pointing at Tetch's chest. Then he's helping Tetch insert the knife into his pudgy, soft flesh. Tetch gasps as it penetrates him, and the Joker helps him slide the blade from sternum to navel. It's a deep cut—deeper than Ressling would have thought Tetch would be able to tolerate, even under the affects of the hallucinogen—but handle it he does, and once he sees the blood, it seems to energize him even more.

And once the blood starts coming, it doesn't stop.

"Keep going," the Joker says. "Have to paint the roses. Hurry. Hurry!"

Tetch nods vigorously, eager to comply, and the Joker steps back—leaving Tetch with the knife—so the rest of the room can watch as he starts tearing into himself with the blade, viciously cutting into his own abdomen as blood starts to spurt onto the black tile.

"Look at you go!"

It's a nauseating sight, the amount of blood spurting from Tetch, and as he rips into his own belly, tearing into his own intestines with one hand, he smears the blood around with the other.

"I think I hear the Queen cooooming," the Joker sing-songs. He is vibrating with excitement as he watches, his eyes bright-dark. Gleaming.

Tetch falls to his knees, unable to hold him himself up any longer, sinking to the floor in a pool of his own blood.

"Paint the roses red," he pants, frantic, still cutting himself open, creating new tears, digging the knife in, desperate for more blood. More red paint. "Paint the roses red! Paint! Paint!"

The Joker cackles, throwing his head back, and Ressling can only guess at what he's thinking. How long he's been waiting for this very moment.

"Paint… paint the roses… red…." Tetch is starting to fade, but the Joker isn't satisfied, and he circles Tetch's body like a vulture as Tetch kneels on the floor, gasping for breath. Blood starts to pour from his mouth.

"Off with his head!" the Joker shouts. He lunges forward and puts his hands on Tetch's shoulders, viciously shaking him. "Off with his head!"

"No!" Tetch gurgles, but he is helpless to stop what is already in motion. When the Joker lets go of him, Tetch falls face first onto the tile, into a pool of his own blood, his intestines and other organs spilling out onto the floor underneath him. "No…"

"You!" the Joker suddenly barks, spinning around. One of his men comes quickly forward—someone Ressling is sure he's never seen before—and hands him an axe.

The Joker yanks it from him excitedly, humming under his breath as he twirls it in a circle at his side. He skips back towards Tetch's body, uncaring of the blood pooling beneath his shoes.

"Off with his head, you idiot…" he murmurs. "Off with his head!"

With that, he raises the axe over his own head and then swiftly brings it down, separating Tetch's head from the rest of his body in just one slice. Tetch's head rolls away, across the floor, and the resulting spray of blood is sickening.

Nobody says anything when it's over. All of them stand there, watching.

When the Joker drops the axe, letting it clatter to the floor, the sound is jarring. Ressling blinks away his shock, and when he finally looks towards Taylor—almost forgetting about her entirely there—he sees her near the bookcase, cowering in herself and shaking, her body curled into a tight ball, her eyes squeezed shut, her arms held over her head and ears, as if to block out sound.

"Always such a bloodbath with you, Joker."

The Joker grins as he glances at Black Mask from over his shoulder. There's flecks of blood on his chin, the bridge of his nose—bright red against the stark white of his greasepaint.

"Someone has to provide the entertainment around here," he says.

The Joker's gaze slides to Ressling then, and Joker gives a sharp jerk of his head towards the bookcase. Ressling understands.

He slips away from the wall—Jason stopped pointing his gun at him sometime during Joker's little off with his head spiel—and quickly rounds the table, crouching to scoop Taylor into his arms. She doesn't fight him like he expects her to, even with the rabbit mask. When he rolls her onto her back to pick her up, she blinks several times, as if the light is too bright, and something about her eyes looks strange. Unnatural. But he doesn't have time to pinpoint exactly what it is. She closes her eyes a moment later, and then her head is lolling back as he lifts her from the floor. He quickly moves to cradle her skull as he lifts her, wondering if this is a side effect from the mind control or the hallucinogen, perhaps both. Maybe she's just exhausted.

Ressling heads for the exit with Taylor cradled in his arms, and he catches the way the Joker looks at her as he passes, the rigid line of Joker's jaw, the hardness in his eyes. If he's worried about what Tetch's done to her, he doesn't let on, but Ressling knows the Joker well enough to know he's concerned—in only the way the Joker can be—and that he'll want Taylor the moment they get out of here. That's how it goes.

"Gentlemen," the Joker says, lingering behind, and Ressling watches him from the doorway for a moment, surrounded by the Joker's other men. He senses their confusion even from behind their masks, but nobody says a word. Maybe they think she's ransom money, or collateral damage. The Joker could've told them anything. Maybe he didn't tell them anything at all.

The Joker mimes taking off a top hat, and then he dramatically bows at the waist. He looks once at Sionis, staring at him from beneath his brows, and then shifts his gaze to Penguin, winking at him. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

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*This chapter contains the following warnings: foul/offensive/sexist language, human trafficking, and graphic depictions of violence/sexual assault.

Author's Notes: I was able to fill a lot of prompts during this four-part run of Cauterize, far too many to list here, but to name a few: Taylor's first job, Taylor doing something behind the Joker's back, someone having a crush on Taylor, Taylor sketching the Joker, and a non-specific request for more Batman villains to make an appearance. Additionally, a special request from a close friend for an appearance by Jason Todd. I know Jason doesn't really talk much here, which is a shame since he is a character who is constantly running his mouth, but I hope his appearance was a delight all the same. Maybe I'll explore him in all his sass-filled glory in a future installment.

I know in a previous chapter I said Jason Todd doesn't exist in this universe—back in chapter three when the Joker taunts Nightwing about Jason, "Oh, you don't know about that timeline yet, do you?"—but I changed my mind. My interpretation of Jason follows the recent run of the Red Hood and the Outlaws storyline where Red Hood is working for Black Mask and they have this weird and slightly intriguing father/son relationship. In this particular universe, I imagine he has not yet made a name for himself as the 'Red Hood'. Also, on a similar vein, I want to make it very clear that this portrayal of Black Mask is not the same one seen in the Birds of Prey film (2020), portrayed by Ewan McGregor. God bless the lovely Mr. McGregor, but no. Just no.

Canonically, the Joker is known to be immune to most toxins—including the fear toxin—so I thought it should stand to reason that this also includes (most) attempts at mind control as well as whatever little aerosol-paralyzing agent Tetch was trying to spray him with. The Joker's just a hard a bastard to kill, what can I say?

This was an extremely difficult and taxing chapter to write for a myriad of reasons—the last time I struggled with a chapter this much was back when I was writing chapter five—but I sincerely hope you were able to enjoy the conclusion to this particular storyline all the same. It's a hard read, and I know there's hardly any interaction between Taylor and the Joker—but I promise I plan to make it up to you in the coming chapter.

Additionally, credit where credit is due (as always) as I must thank my beautiful/amazing/exceptionally talented best friend for assisting me with some of the more intricate details of this chapter. You know who you are, and you're a lifesaver.

To everyone: your feedback for the last chapter was incredible. I'm truly stunned speechless. I want to extend the utmost thanks to everyone who is currently taking the time to read this story, and especially to all the new readers who have reached out to leave feedback. I've heard from so many readers whose first language is not English, and I want you to know that I appreciate you all so much for taking the time to share your feedback with me, especially in a language that is not your mother tongue. It really means the world to me. I couldn't be writing this without you guys, and I have loved chatting with all of you who have opened up that line of communication. As always, review replies will be forthcoming, and please, if you're able, a review to let me know you'd like for me to keep going (or what you would like to see for future chapters) would be lovely and is always so encouraging. I love filling your prompts, and some of them have been a great challenge, but a challenge I always enjoy tackling.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has ever created art, videos, playlists, moodboards, gifs, memes, and written tribute fics… I am so incredibly grateful to you. You all know who you are. The tribute fics are something that, unfortunately, I am not able to share at this time due to spoilers, but please know that your writing contributions have absolutely floored me, and I am so open to any more creations (of any nature) should you feel inspired to make any. The love and energy that some of you have funneled into this story is more than I ever could have hoped for. Thank you all so much. Even the tiniest review is a huge boost of encouragement, and it's important you know that. Thank you, thank you, thank you.