A/N: Woo, classes start today. Developmental Psychology and Human Anatomy & Physiology. Phbt, I've got these handled.

---

'The kids from room eight haven't come down for breakfast,' said a quite fidgety aide to the head nurse.

'Room eight?' the head nurse repeated without even looking at the aide. 'I saw Louis and Campbell.'

'No, the other two boys, Jackson and Patrick.'

The head nurse paused, dropping the file in her hand to the desk of the nurse's station. 'Jackson's supposed to be under special watch, you know that. Why isn't there someone watching him?'

The aide just stood there with her mouth open, so without even waiting for an answer, Nurse Douglas left the station and started out towards the building where their most unpredictable inmate was being held. Although the psychiatrists had managed to make him drop the early habit of head-butting anyone who made fun of him by calling him Jack the Ripper, at least twice a month he got into fights with other children or tried to escape, even if he was in a straitjacket. Unlike most of the patients, he was never a danger to himself, but almost constantly a danger to others (he'd done everything from trying to asphyxiate a roommate with a pillow to convincing a girl to stab herself in the neck with a fork). Worst of all, he failed to show any remorse for his actions—he never even lied about doing them, which caused the lead psychiatrist to devote amazing amounts of time to the study of the boy.

She came to the door to Jackson's room and opened it almost hesitantly, jumping as she nearly ran into Jackson, who was looking up at her with a devious smile, those cold eyes amused by something.

'Good morning, Nurse Douglas.'

'Where's Patrick?'

Jackson's smile widened and he tipped his head a little at her. 'He hasn't shown up for breakfast yet?'

'Jackson...' she said dangerously, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him deeper into the room with her. 'Oh... oh Jesus.'

Frantically, she pressed the nurse call button on the wall before wrapping her arms around the waist of the boy who was suspended from the upper bunk by one of Jackson's school uniform ties. Supporting him, she felt around for the Windsor that Jackson always used only to find that one of the boys had tied some terrible monstrosity of a seemingly unending knot. As she fumbled around, Jackson's doctor and a team of nurses appeared at the door, the nurses pouring in to help Nurse Douglas. Without a second thought, the thirteen-year-old ignored the others and walked over to the doctor, standing beside him as he watched as the nurses fuss over the unconscious boy hanging from the bed. One cut Jackson's tie and he sighed angrily.

'That was a good tie.'

The doctor put his hand on Jackson's shoulder and watched Nurse Douglas give the boy CPR until he coughed raggedly. Glaring up at the two of them, she spoke.

'Get Jackson out of here,' she said, fury behind every word. 'Now.'

The man closed his hand around Jackson's shoulder and led him out of the room towards his office. The boy was silent the entire time, but if he was angry, he didn't show it in his face. They came to a heavy oak door and the doctor pushed Jackson in before him, slamming the door and locking it behind both of them. Without a word, he went around and closed the heavy curtains; the room was bathed in darkness until he clicked on his desk lamp.

'You're upset, Dr Greene.'

The dark-haired man came around the desk and sat in a chair across from Jackson, who was now sitting with his legs Indian-style with his elbows on his knees. His speech was incredibly calculated. 'It's one thing if you try to escape in the middle of the night, but it's another thing if you try to kill your roommate by hanging him from the bed.'

'How do you know he didn't do it to himself?' he asked with a little smile as Dr Greene glared at him. 'I was going to just have him smothered with a pillow, but I thought that was a bit trite. I didn't want to repeat myself. Creativity and all that.'

Dr Greene pinched his lips together until they were white. 'Do you see anything wrong with what you're doing?'

Jackson honestly tried to look as though he was really considering the question. 'Should I?'

Inwardly, Dr Greene smiled at the boy's outright audacity, but he kept his professional façade. 'Killing isn't a craft for smart boys like you, Jackson.'

Amusement flickered across Jackson's face. 'Odd way to phrase that, Doctor.'

Dr Greene leaned slipped forward on his chair and rested his elbows knees. He stared at the boy, who slowly leaned in so that their faces were only about half a foot apart. 'You need to stop this behaviour or we won't be able to release you on time.'

'Release me in time for what?' Jackson asked, narrowing his eyes.

There was a fleeting moment of consideration before Dr Greene stood and walked around his desk, settling down in the plush leather rolling chair and pulling open one of the drawers. He drew out a slightly battered envelope and threw it under the lamp so that Jackson could see it. Uncrossing his legs, Jackson leaned forward and laid a hand on the manila envelope, tipping it slightly towards him so he could read the spindly writing on the face.

'Leelanau School?' he asked before looking back at Dr Greene.

'A boarding school in Glen Arbor,' Dr Greene replied, steepling his fingers. 'We send a lot of our prospectives there.'

Jackson took the envelope and slipped it into his lap, looking at the seal of the school—a large L encapsulated in a double circle with oak and pine leaves tapping the crux of the letter. 'I'm afraid I don't understand.'

'You aren't meant to,' the doctor said, raising his eyebrows. 'All that you need to know is that you need to stop this childish behaviour soon.'

An extemporaneous laugh escaped Jackson's lips as he gave Dr Greene an incredulous look. 'Is that a threat?'

Greene didn't skip a beat. 'Would you like it to be?'

Jackson's eyebrow twitched as he ripped open the envelope. 'What makes me a prospective to go to this school?'

'Everything is decided according to a psychological test administered by myself and some of the nurses,' he said. 'A Swiss test.'

'Swiss test,' Jackson repeated, pulling out the school information and scanning it over. 'I'm not going to get any more information, am I?'

'I don't trust you that much,' he said in monotone.

His bright eyes flittered up to Dr Greene for just a moment before he went back to reading. The high school was indeed different, focusing more on individual strengths rather than just lecturing to a room of blank-faced students. What was most important, however, was that the entire day was scheduled to the minute. He could see what Dr Greene was attempting here—the doctor knew that any unused time was time that Jackson could use to, say, hang his roommate from a bed with his private school tie.

'We're going to go ahead and place you in a single room,' Dr Greene said, interrupting Jackson's reading. 'You've already tried to kill two roommates, so—'

'I had my reasons,' Jackson snapped back quickly.

Dr Greene twisted a pen in his hand. 'That's not the point.'

'Pacta sunt servanda,' he said softly, not looking up from the school catalogue.

The man froze, looking at Jackson with wide eyes. 'What did you say?'

'Pacta sunt servanda,' Jackson repeated, looking up at the doctor. 'Latin. Agreements—'

'—must be honoured,' the doctor finished. 'I'm very familiar with the phrase.'

Jackson rolled his eyes before looking back down and speaking under his breath. 'Then why ask me the meaning? You know, I don't think I've noticed anyone else being sent to this school...'

'Whose agreements were you honouring?' Dr Greene said, leaning hard on his desk.

'You know how it is,' Jackson said, closing the catalogue and then slipping it neatly back into the envelope. 'You're a professional too—we take everything in confidence.'

Almost as if it had been prearranged, there was a loud knocking at the door. Greene gave Jackson a surprised look as he just smiled contentedly. Watching the back of the unmoving Jackson, Greene crossed the room slowly. The knocking continued until Greene unlocked the door to reveal a frantic nurse.

'Doctor, we need you immediately,' the nurse said, shifting from foot to foot nervously. 'We were unable to stabilise the patient. He—'

She looked beyond the doctor to the back of Jackson's head.

'Oh, sir, I didn't realise that you had a patient,' she said, blushing.

Jackson turned around to look at the doctor and nurse with smugness, balancing on his knees as he grasped the back of the chair. 'You heard her, doctor. Best be getting on now.'

Greene clenched his jaw. 'Nurse, please take Mr Rippner to solitary confinement. I'd like him in a Posey until I have a chance to talk to him.'

The woman looked at the calm boy and then back at the doctor questioningly, but she had no choice but to take the psychiatrist's demands. 'Yes sir.'

The nurse ran down the hall to give the message to another nurse before returning to watch Jackson. Dr Greene left the room and within a couple of minutes, two orderlies showed up with a straitjacket. Jackson didn't fight them until he was completely bound, at which time he started laughing and had to be carried to his confinement.

---

One rule of a solitary room in a mental hospital is that it must not have any items which may be used as weapons, and this happened to include not only chairs, as one would expect, but also all sorts of clocks. By the grumbling of Jackson's stomach, he could only assume that it was around lunchtime when there were finally footsteps outside of his room, but seeing as he'd missed breakfast also, it could still be brunch time. He mused over this as he listened to the muffled voices outside of his door—yes, they'd definitely stopped right in front of his—trying to figure out exactly had come to check up on him. At first, he thought it was just a nurse, but soon Dr Greene's familiar face appeared in the slot, his skin red and his eyes looking absolutely enraged. The slot cracked shut once he saw that Jackson was seated on the other side, and within moments he stepped in the room, throwing the door against the padded wall, crossing quickly to pull Jackson up by the front of his straitjacket.

'This isn't a time for your fucking games,' the man hissed, shoving Jackson up against one of the walls. 'How are you going to explain that you killed your roommate?'

'I didn't kill him,' said Jackson calmly, his lips moving very deliberately with each word.

'What the hell do you mean?' the doctor said, pressing him so hard, his arms were shaking from the exertion.

'I arranged the entire operation, but I didn't kill him,' Jackson said self-indulgently.

Dr Greene dropped the slight thirteen-year-old and moved back a couple of steps. Jackson tipped his head to the side, but the questioning look didn't spread beyond that. He seemed vaguely proud of himself for a successful job—nothing else seemed to register. He didn't even appear to be afraid of the consequences of his actions, his face as cool as his eyes.

'What's wrong, Dr Greene?' he asked, leaning forward a little with a demure smile. 'Won't this improve the results of your Swiss test?'

Greene frowned.

'I've seen my files,' Jackson murmured, and there was a pop as he dislocated his shoulder and started making his way out of his straitjacket. 'You know, the results of my little test. "Unable to make meaningful relationships with peers, a non-ability to trust others, yet incredibly bright and manipulating." What exactly is La société mondiale des investigateurs privés?'

Jackson managed to get the buckles of his straitjacket to the front of his body and started to unbuckle it with his teeth. Dr Greene watched him nervously, obviously trying to decide whether he should leave and alert the nurses or stay with Jackson, but as he moved to the door, Jackson stopped immediately and let out a low growl. Greene's hand stopped right before he rapped on the door, and he turned around to look at Jackson, who was looking his most malicious.

'You didn't answer my question, Doctor,' he snarled, snapping his shoulder back into place before throwing the straitjacket to the side.

'That's not for now, Jackson. Now what we need to worry about is finding a way to get you out of this mess,' he said almost nervously, leaning back against the door, attempting to look calm as Jackson gave him a terrifying look. 'You have to tell me who made you do this. In the future, you can subscribe to professional secrecy, but at this point, you have no support structure to get you out of your punishment.'

'What does it matter if I get caught up in punishment?' he asked, leaning back against the wall egotistically as he rubbed his shoulder. 'Punishment has never actually punished me before.'

'You're being cocky. Think logically.'

Under Dr Greene's hazel glare, Jackson reviewed outcomes. Stay silent, and he could be institutionalised for many more years without a hope for parole or release, but he would also gain the trust of his employer. However, what was the use of the trust of one woman if he had no chance to build his résumé outside of a state-run children's psychiatric facility in southern New York? His eyes clouded, and Dr Greene saw that he could announce the victory.

'Jackson,' he said softly, walking over and bending down to his eye level. 'Who hired you for this murder?'

---

'It was Martha Webster, Patrick's mother.'

The courtroom was mostly empty, the proceedings being slightly hush-hush because of the persons involved. In fact, there was a hesitancy to do any sort of court case until it was announced that Jackson would be considered a witness to the plaintiff, Patrick's father William. Shortly after Patrick's death, Jackson had given a statement, which was signed by Dr Philip Greene to establish legality, that said he was paid by Martha Webster to arrange for her son's death through any means possible.

'And how did you manage to arrange this murder?' asked William Webster's barrister, pacing in front of the stand.

'Manipulation,' Jackson answered, but after a moment of silence, he realised that he was expected to give a fuller answer. 'I convinced one of the boys down the hall to give me a dose of the lorazepam he keeps hidden under his bed and in return, I promised not to tell the nurses about the stash.'

'And you used this… lorh-ahzy-PAHM to...?'

'I dropped the lor-AYE-zeh-pam into the medicine cup the nurses brought around every morning for Patrick. It looked a lot like one of the pills he always took, so I was able to switch them out relatively easily,' he explained, smiling a bit at the confused look on the lawyer's face. 'Lorazepam is a sedative. Patrick thought he was sick, so he went back to bed.'

'I see,' said the barrister, putting a hand to his chin. 'Now, clear this up for me, Mr Rippner, how is it that you didn't kill Patrick Webster?'

'It's a sedative, not a poison,' Jackson said sharply in a holy-than-thou-art tone. 'I had lorazepam boy hang Patrick from the bed.'

'But Patrick Webster didn't die from asphyxiation.'

'No, he didn't.'

'Will you be so kind as to tell us how he died?'

'Certainly,' Jackson replied with a creepy little smile. 'When the nurses all rushed in, one of them was the one I convinced to inject him with the antibiotic that ended up killing him. As she held him up, she stabbed a syringe into him that was full of tilmicosin,' he paused again before explaining himself. 'Although fabulous in administration to bovines, the antibiotic is quite lethal to humans.'

The barrister seemed slightly flustered by Jackson's immense pharmaceutical knowledge and looked over at Dr Greene darkly as though it were his fault. 'So Sharena Douglas was the murderer?'

Jackson rolled his eyes. 'No, don't be stupid. Nurse Douglas can't be swayed to do anyone's bidding.'

The judge laughed lightly.

'The nurse was Lauren Gates.'

'Lauren Gates,' the barrister repeated, seemingly for the court typist's sake. 'How were you able to manage to convince her to do that for you?'

The same little smile came over his face. 'I promised that I wouldn't tell Dr Greene about our illicit affair.'