Julian ran away from the woman, who had begun lashing out at him with heavy hits and slaps, over the veranda he went towards the fence, blindly and frantically, as the men leapt down from it. They charged at him. Julian realized immediately that they had only been feigning a kind of incompetence in order to suspiciously watch Lana and himself, perhaps they had lingered in every garden up until now in order to check it thoroughly. Still, he was over to the other side of that fence long before they got anywhere near him.

The garden he alighted in looked the same, if a little bit more grand, than Lana's had been. He felt somehow different now, and, looking down, realized with a shock that he was once more a woman, his old self, Julia again. She felt a sense of relief; she had not enjoyed her brief interval as a man.

This garden, also like Lana's, had more grape vines surrounding the expansive veranda, particularly towards the fence opposite to Julia's current vantage point. She would practically have to climb them as if they were a beanstalk to get to the other side, so instead she decided that she would cut through the stranger's house like a burglar. She quickly crossed the yard, jumped the stars to the veranda, threw open the glass doors, thankfully unlocked, and found herself in an elegant wooden interior, varnished floors and paneled walls, with a telescreen twice the size of her own, on which an enormous head of big brother was watching her and mouthing what looked like threats and profanities, but she didn't stop for long enough to make sure.

Here, the kitchen was across from the living room, across from the kitchen was a short hallway, down which Julia could see a front door and the light, through its semi-transparent window, that indicated a small glimpse of freedom. On the couch in the living room, a young woman in track pants and a pony tail gave Julia a surprised look. Julia indicated for her to be quiet, and then pointed to the front door, hoping that she would understand that Julia was harmless and just about to leave. Instead, and just as Julia had anticipated, the girl tossed her head back and bellowed, "Mum, someone's here!"

Julia heard a clatter from outside, and guessed that it was the men, finally making it over the fence. She heard a door closing from somewhere within the house. Trembling with panic, and a strong intuitive feeling of dread as if she knew already that she'd met a dead end, she ran in the direction of the front door.

Down that hallway, a door opened to her left and a foot shot out suddenly and tripped her up. Time seemed to slow down terribly between Julia briefly becoming airborne, and the inevitable impact of her head with the front door. It hit her head just below her hairline, and when she put her hand to where it hurt she could feel the moistness of herself bleeding, with the blow adding to head injury she'd received from falling off the fence before, knocking her well and truly senseless. Tiny fences bubbled up in front of her vision- fences upon fences- she felt like she was going to vomit.

The short and slender, yet somehow stately woman who had tripped her over, was now standing just to her left- unmistakably once again the dark woman from the phone call, the dark woman who had tracked Julia down to that empty building, who Julia had heard but not seen in her own house.

"Well now, Miss Julia, this is convenient." She said, a smile on her pixie face that didn't reach her enormous dark eyes.

Julia could hear the throbbing of the men's footsteps as they caught up with her to where she was hopelessly sprawled on the ground; no escape was available this time, she would be hurried into their terrible black van and no one would ever hear of her again. She gathered herself up, huddled up closer towards the front door, not quite brave enough to stand up yet.

"Strange as it seems," Said the woman, "You've lucked straight into one of our Dunderhaven headquarters. If we planned it, it couldn't have gone any better. Here, get up now, and away from that door."

One of the men came forward and pulled Julia groggily to her feet.

"Not worth the effort at all really, is she?" He said.

"Not my orders. I don't understand either, surely we don't really need her. Maybe it's a personal thing, like a vendetta or something." Replied the woman, and focusing again on Julia, said, "Now, we'll be needing you to go down that hall there, through that door and down the stairs."

Julia looked over. The hallway was just to her left and was preceded by an opened heavy, dungeon-like door. The hallway itself looked dark and claustrophobic, compared to where Julia was currently standing, still with the light of freedom coming through the small window on the front door, the floor vanishing away down that hallway, supposedly into stairs. A more foreboding space Julia had never seen. She knew for a fact that, on going down that corridor as had been suggested, and down those stairs, never would she ascend them again.

Paralysed for a moment with the thought of her own misfortune, she was instead shoved forward by the man.

Down, down the hallway she went, down the black stairs and tripping along the way in the dark. At the very base of this tunnel was a door. The woman pushed Julia aside and opened it, pushing her on through.

There she found herself, in a tiled, perfectly cleaned room, practically gleaming with disinfectant, that looked very much like a laboratory.