"How's your arm?" Methos asked Caspian after the noise had died down.
"In a previous life that kid must've been a cookie cutter fish," Caspian remarked, "Get anything out of her?"
"Not a word," Methos replied, "We've got her tied down to a table down there, they've been hammering her with the same questions for hours, and she won't say a thing. I'm starting to wonder if she can even talk."
"She can sure as hell scream," Caspian told him.
"Yeah well you were doing pretty well yourself earlier," Methos said, "Come on, let's see if they've gotten her to talk yet."
The two brothers headed down to the basement where Kronos conducted experiments in his spare time. It was almost a perfect recreation of the mad scientist labs seen in old movies; tables full of beakers and bottles and test tubes filled with different colored liquids, plastic hoses running bubbling liquids from one bottle to another, metal tables, and a few devices the world would be better off not knowing about.
Silas had handcuffed the girl's wrist and locked the other cuff to the table so she couldn't get away. Not that she had made much effort in all the time she had been down there, though. A hundred times she'd been asked who she was, two hundred times she'd been asked what she was doing there, and never had she answered during the whole ordeal.
"Anything yet?" Methos asked as they entered the room.
"Nothing," Kronos answered.
In the light, Methos was able to get a better look at the girl. Her skin was horribly pale and it looked like she hadn't seen the sun in her whole life. Her hair was a rat's nest that looked like it had recently been chopped off to what it was. She wore a dirty white T-shirt covered by an almost threadbare jacket and she had on a pair of blue jeans that looked like the material was rotting away and on her feet were a pair of sneakers that looked like they could fly across the room with one good kick. And, Methos noticed as more of an afterthought, she had some very familiar looking black spots on her arms.
"So that's where the ticks came from," Methos said, and without turning around to face Caspian, told him, "Go upstairs and bring down my cigarettes."
The girl got a different look on her face when she heard that. Her eyes flew wide open and her mouth opened up, or rather her lips got as far away from one another as possible but her teeth stayed firmly in place, but still she wouldn't say anything, she wouldn't even make a sound.
Methos looked and saw Kronos and Silas standing on either side of the table and said bluntly, "Well don't everybody stand around like a couple of petrified redwoods!"
Kronos and Silas both took a step back after Methos' little outburst, mumbling this and that, but not really intending to go anywhere.
"Do you mind?" Methos said.
Kronos put his hands up in a mock surrender and he and Silas headed for the stairs.
"So I have you to thank for the little bloodsuckers biting me this morning," Methos said to the girl, "And for that amateur appendectomy last night!"
And still the girl made no sign that she even heard him. But her eyes weren't blank, he noticed that she did look up at him, not off to the side at anything else. And as he stood there watching her, her breathing became heavier a couple of times, and then she closed her eyes.
He waited but was surprised to find that she was still alive, just asleep now. He didn't have any idea who the hell she was or where the hell she came from, but he could already tell he had his work cut out for him.
"How long are we going to leave her chained up down there?" Methos asked Kronos later that night.
"Why?" Kronos asked, "You got other plans for her?"
"No, I was just thinking we could bring her up here and tie her to the radiator in the kitchen, she couldn't possibly get loose from there," Methos said.
"And what's wrong with the basement?" Kronos asked.
"We could watch her easier up here," Methos insisted, "Besides, if she'd managed to get hold of one of those bottles down there, she could blast her way out and blow up the whole house in the process, and you know it."
However, Kronos refused to budge from where he stood on the matter. "She's going to stay in the basement."
"For how long?" Methos asked, "We're not going to get anything out of her, Kronos…she's been down there for 10 hours now, she hasn't said a word, she hasn't made a sound, she hasn't attempted to get away, she hasn't asked for food or water, you can't break her like you're experienced in doing with regular people."
"We'll see about that, brother," Kronos replied, "We'll see."
Methos still wasn't convinced. He had studied the human psyche before anybody even knew what it was, he knew how it worked, and he had seen the effects worked differently with different people…but he had no idea how to break somebody who already made no demands and showed neither defiance nor cooperation. The way he saw it, they could leave her down in the basement, chained to the table for days, and she'd never once try to fight them. That seemed to have left her the minute she was captured.
He looked at the clock on the wall, 11 o' clock already, where had the day gone? Methos turned around to make sure that Kronos hadn't followed him. There wasn't anybody there, which he took as a good sign. He ducked into the closet in the dining room, took out some extra bedding and headed back down to the basement. He was surprised to find that the girl was asleep again…what he considered the most shocking of all was how well she was taking her treatment. The only conclusion he could come to was that wherever she was before coming here, she must've been put through far worse.
Methos went over to the table and slipped a pillow under the girl's head. Then he undid her shoes and pulled them off, and, deciding she was truly asleep and not trying to pull anything, he took out the keys Silas had left just out of her reach and unlocked the cuff momentarily. He turned her over onto her stomach and peeled the jacket off of her, and when it came off he saw something he didn't know what to make of it. There was almost no back to the shirt that she wore. It looked like somebody had started to cut out the collar and simply went on from there, cutting out the back of the shirt until there were only two inches away from the very bottom of it. How it even stayed on her body was beyond him. It was of no matter to him, he draped a sheet over her and headed back to the stairs, only to find Kronos there watching him. Methos jumped back…around his brothers and only his brothers, he allowed his guard to go down, so he didn't remember to be cautious every time he felt a quickening around, and more than once that was almost his undoing.
Kronos stood there with that oh so familiar look on his face, the one that told Methos he was anxious to hear the explanation for this one. Methos tried to push him aside and headed up the stairs. Kronos followed behind him and said, "I hope you're not starting the process of repeating your previous mistakes."
"Why would you think that?" Methos asked.
"No reason," Kronos replied coyly, "It just seems to me you can't ever make up your mind about what to do with cases like this. First one side and then the other…" with a slight chuckle he added, "You're a regular Mengele, aren't you, the white angel?"
Methos stopped dead in his tracks. He felt his top lip curling up and his teeth becoming exposed and ready to bite and tear into some flesh himself. He turned around, staring daggers into his brother, and in the blink of an eye, he charged Kronos and violently grabbed him.
"I told you NEVER TO CALL ME THAT!" Methos screamed at him as he grabbed Kronos by the collar of his jacket and threw him against the wall.
The noise had drawn Caspian and Silas out of the far corners of the house and they came running and pulled Methos off of Kronos, and out of his reach. It was only after Methos let go of him that Kronos had realized his mistake. He had forgotten, as if he could forget, during World War II one of Methos's last wives had been rounded up to a concentration camp in Auschwitz and was killed by one of the Nazi doctors. It had never been confirmed if it was Josef Mengele himself who so ordered the hit on her life, but from that day to this, every time Methos heard that name, he flew into a blind rage at whoever said it.
Kronos put his hands up again, as he had earlier in the basement, this time with some sincerity, but his sarcasm was still there, "Alright, alright killer, just calm down." Then in a moment of seriousness, he added, quietly, "I'm sorry, Methos, I forgot."
Methos tried again to lunge at Kronos but the other two held him back. He was growling like a wild animal and his hands just ached to choke and drive his nails into Kronos's throat. "As if you could forget," he said.
Methos stayed in the basement through the night and kept an eye on the girl for a while, then, inevitably, he fell asleep. He woke up and knew that he had slept through the remainder of the night and now it was early morning; early enough probably, that the others would still be asleep. He went over to the table and saw that through the night, the girl had hardly moved. He pulled away the sheet and saw her for what she was, or what he thought she was anyway, an apparently sick kid and little more. It had been a while since he was a doctor but he knew if he had a chance to examine her, he could find out what was really the matter…at face value she appeared to be malnourished, underfed, and shut away from the sun for most of her life, but he could tell there was more to it than that. It was obvious that she'd spent a better part of her time covered in filth and grime, and he couldn't help but wonder where the hell she had been kept.
He picked up the keys and unlocked the cuff. The clink of the metal falling away seemed to wake her up. She looked up at Methos, clearly not knowing what was going to happen to her now.
"You're not off the hook yet," Methos told her, "Get up," he grabbed her and helped her off the table, then shoved her ahead of him, heading upstairs. Once they reached the top of the stairs, she tried to move but Methos jerked her back and shoved her off in the other direction into the bathroom. He hit her in the back of the head and told her to get in the shower and wash up, and just to make sure that she didn't try another disappearing act, he kept the door open and watched her.
The girl went over to the shower and turned on the water, and while she waited for it to heat up, she looked back at the door and saw Methos never once taking his eyes off her. Slowly, reluctantly, she started to take her clothes off, always keeping her back to him. First she took off her shirt, then undid her jeans and pushed them down and stepped out of them, and stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed behind her.
Methos stepped out of the room momentarily to make sure nobody was coming. The problem with having four Immortals in an enclosed space was that there was always a quickening about and he could never tell just how far away they were. There wasn't anybody in the kitchen yet, he took that as a good sign, and he quietly headed over to the doorway leading into the dining room, and just as he stepped through it, he collided with Caspian and each got their nose smashed in.
"Why don't you watch where you're going?" Caspian asked.
"Me? You're the one wandering around the house in the dark like the bogey-man, what're you doing?" Methos asked.
"I came down to get something to drink, if that's alright with you, Chancellor," Caspian replied as he headed over to the cupboards.
"I thought you kept a bottle upstairs," Methos said as he turned on the kitchen light.
"I did, I drank it already," Caspian answered as he opened one of the cupboard doors and reached for another bottle.
Methos looked in the cupboard and saw something. He took out an opened box of crackers and an empty soda can. "If we'd been paying closer attention when we got here we would've realized somebody was staying here…"
"I suppose we're going to have to feed her too, eh?" Caspian asked.
"Might be a good idea," Methos said sarcastically, "I don't know how long she's been here but it would seem for however long it's been, all she's had to eat so far is some stale crackers and a can of RC…so it probably stands to reason she hasn't been here long."
"Long enough to know the house inside and out," Caspian remarked, "By the way, where is the little nightmare?"
"Still down in the basement," Methos said.
Caspian listened and heard the water running in the bathroom, "And who's in the shower?" Caspian asked, "The invisible man?"
"I'm going to," Methos answered, "Got to let the water run a while, you should've seen the stuff coming out of the pipes."
He wasn't sure if Caspian was buying it or not, but fortunately for Methos, Caspian was still too tired to really pay attention. With a new bottle in hand, he headed back the way he had come and disappeared into one of the dark corners of the house.
Methos heard the water shut off and headed back to the bathroom. When he went in he saw the girl had already gotten dressed again, without even taking the time to dry off first.
"Alright kid, back to the basement," he told her.
She went with him, willingly or not it didn't matter because she didn't try to fight him. He took her back downstairs and cuffed her to the table again, and she resumed the position she had been in earlier: face down on her stomach and with one arm over her head, exactly as she had been the previous night. Methos didn't know whether to be relieved that the girl was so cooperative, or concerned, and he decided he'd get the answer to that soon enough.
"Why did you do it?" Kronos asked Methos later that morning when he came down to the basement.
Methos decided to play dumb, "Do what?"
"Take her upstairs."
"How did you know I did?" Methos asked.
Kronos grabbed the girl by the hair and jerked her head up. She woke up momentarily to find out who was pulling on her hair but went back to sleep when he let go.
"I grabbed her just like that yesterday too, today there's not a drop of oil in her whole head," Kronos told Methos.
"So I took her up to the bathroom to clean up, so what?" Methos asked defensively, "She didn't try anything, I even left the room and she never tried to escape…she's not going to go anywhere, Kronos, if you're done poking and prodding her, we could take her upstairs…"
"And do what with her?" Kronos asked.
Methos shrugged and suggested, "We could tie her to the radiator up there, if you still think she'd try to run." Methos' temper was growing short with his brother, "Look at her, Kronos, she hasn't tried to escape since we caught her, she's made no attempt to fight back, she doesn't talk, she hasn't eaten anything, do you really think she could be so much trouble?"
"Look at the trouble she's already been to us," Kronos replied.
"Do you really think she could do it again?" Methos asked.
"I don't know…" Kronos looked at the unmoving figure lying on the table, "But I guess we could find out."
Methos left to try and get back into town and check all the missing person reports to see if any matched their houseguest. Kronos unlocked the cuffs but the girl didn't wake up and didn't move at all. Silas picked her up like a rag doll and carried her up the stairs with Kronos following behind him.
"Where should I put her?" Silas asked.
"Just put her in the living room…I want to watch her and see what she does," Kronos answered.
Silas chuckled and remarked as he put her down on the couch, "It doesn't look to me like she'll be doing much of anything."
"Maybe not," Kronos replied, "But don't forget the other night when she gutted Methos like a fish and rolled him like a bowling ball. How does a person go from that, to this?" he asked as he pointed down at her.
Silas looked down at the girl and then back at Kronos and asked, "You think she's faking it?"
"I don't know, Methos thinks she might be sick, maybe he's right."
He hadn't gotten around to doing much examining of her the other day, for the most part he watched her, expecting her, like most would do, to struggle and resist and try to escape. But Methos was right, she hadn't, and that confused him. Like Methos, Kronos had been around long enough that he could only look at her to know there were already at least half a dozen different things wrong with her, but to what extent, that he wasn't sure of. If she kept laying around like a corpse all day, he might have plenty of opportunities to poke and prod at her to find out what made her tick.
Silas hovered over her for a minute, scrutinizing every detail of her face and asked, "How old do you think she is?"
"Don't know…might be able to find out though."
Kronos had never been terribly impressed with science's methods of determining the age of a person, mainly because most of those methods were only applied after a person had died, and it was never an exact science either. Oh sure, those little men in white coats made new discoveries every day but they still weren't any closer to the true answers than they were when they first started. Kronos however, was working on an experiment of his own on how to determine the exact age of a live person by a small blood sample, though looking over his new victim, he questioned if she even had the blood to spare. He wondered if he were to cut her open, just what he'd find inside of her body, the usual stuff aside.
The girl awoke when she felt the sharp stabbing pain in her arm. She looked up and saw Kronos and Silas standing over her, and in Kronos's hand was a syringe full of blood, her blood. She tried to get up but instead fell back against the couch again and lapsed back into unconsciousness.
"You really think it'll work?" Silas asked Kronos.
"Either way it can't turn out any worse than my last attempt," Kronos said as he headed towards the basement.
They felt another quickening and a second later, Methos came through the front door and abruptly announced, "Congratulations, it's a girl."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Kronos asked.
"I checked every missing and wanted poster at the post office, the bank and the police station," Methos said, "If this girl is missing, nobody's missing her. There's nothing that even remotely matches to her."
"So where did she come from?" Silas asked.
"I don't know, has she said anything?" Methos asked.
"Said? She hasn't even woken up," Kronos told him.
"What?" Methos asked, and started for the basement.
"She's not down there!" Kronos told him just as he reached the stairs, "You were so damn persistent about it, I finally agreed and brought her up."
Methos doubled back and went into the living room and saw the girl more or less lifelessly laying around on the couch. He stood hovered over her for a minute, watching her. She didn't seem to acknowledge his presence in the room, she didn't move at all except for her light breathing. Methos absentmindedly let his fingers trace over the top of her head and run through the short curls in her hair for a moment, trying to think.
"And what does the good doctor recommend this time?" Kronos asked.
Methos turned around and saw Kronos and Silas standing in the threshold separating the living room from the dining room.
"I'd like to examine her," Methos said.
"I bet you would," Kronos replied.
Methos turned around and saw that mischievous look on Kronos's face, to which he promptly returned, "Don't get smart."
"Well then?"
"Not here," Methos said, "Up in my room." Before the others had a chance to chime in like a couple of idiots, he added, "I still have some things stored away up there from when I was a doctor."
"Whatever you say," Kronos remarked.
Caspian was coming out of his room just as Methos came up carrying the girl in his arms.
"That thing's still here?" Caspian asked, "I thought Kronos would've gotten rid of her by now."
"I don't know what you're complaining about," Methos said as he headed over to his room, "She only bit you, she stabbed me and knocked me on the floor."
"So what are you doing?" Caspian asked as he followed Methos in.
"I want to find out what's wrong with her," Methos said as he laid her out on the bed.
"What's wrong with her is she's about dead now," Caspian told him, "You'd be better off killing her now and getting it over with."
"Why do I get the feeling you'd enjoy that?" Methos asked.
"Why do I get the feeling you enjoyed your work in the previous century of cutting open rotting corpses a bit too much?" Caspian remarked.
"Some history may repeat itself but that's not one of them at this given time," Methos said, "If you intend to stay through this, shut up and make yourself useful."
"Doing what?" Caspian asked.
Methos turned to glance at him and said, "Well for starters, help me get her undressed."
He knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say; Caspian's overall demeanor seemed to perk up and he only said in response, "With pleasure."
Kronos felt somebody coming and looked to see Methos slowly, almost reluctantly, heading down the stairs.
"Well, what did you find out?" Kronos asked.
"Not much," Methos replied, "Did you come to any conclusion on how old she is?"
"No," Kronos answered, "I took a blood sample to test it, but that idiot brother of yours Caspian smashed it when he came down to the basement earlier."
"Well you won't be able to get another one out of her now," Methos said, "I figure she's about 17 or 18, height, about 5'7, her weight is about 140, it's obvious to me that she hasn't eaten for quite some time, she currently seems to be suffering from several vitamin deficiencies, she's lost a lot of color, I'd wager she's been kept out of direct sunlight for at least three months, if I had to guess, I'd say she's coming off a case of scarlet fever…"
"Didn't that go out about 40 years ago?" Kronos asked.
"You certainly don't hear much about it anymore," Methos agreed, "She has several bites over her body that indicate she's been in contact with ticks, fleas, mosquitoes and chiggers," he quickly added, "I checked, no lice."
"I'm going to go on a limb and guess no crabs either," Kronos added.
"Don't interrupt," Methos told him, "Overall her biggest problems seem to be lack of nutrition, lack of sunlight, and an overexposure to the outdoors. That, and the fact that she won't wake up, but I would attribute part of that to the fact that her body has nothing to run on for energy."
"So what?" Kronos asked.
"Well, there's one more thing I haven't told you about," Methos said.
"What is it?"
Methos opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, and then said, "You'd have to see it for yourself."
"Sounds serious," Kronos said as he stood up.
"It is, believe me," Methos responded as he followed behind Kronos up the stairs.
"Your room?" Kronos asked.
"Yes."
They reached the head of the stairs and headed over to Methos's room. Kronos headed in and saw Caspian standing by the bed, where the girl was undressed, asleep and covered by the bed sheet.
"Exactly what am I supposed to be looking at?" Kronos asked.
"You'll never believe this one," Caspian said as he grabbed the bottom of the sheet.
Caspian slowly drew the sheet back, revealing first the girl's legs which were pale but otherwise normal, then her groin, which as far as Kronos could tell, also seemed normal. Then the sheet pulled up over her stomach, and Kronos saw something. There was a line going up the middle of her stomach, like a cut, and it continued up her stomach, in between her breasts and then forked like a Y and the two shorter lines ran diagonally upward, cutting off below her collarbone. Kronos saw this and he immediately knew what it was.
"Autopsy incisions," he realized.
"They're still relatively fresh, and note the green surrounding them," Methos said, "The cuts are already infected. Somebody tried cutting this girl open and they didn't even wait until she was dead to do it."