Later that afternoon, Kronos came down the stairs and found Methos sprawled out on the couch, asleep. He went over to his brother and woke him up.
"What did you do that for?" Methos asked, "I just closed my eyes."
"What did you find?" Kronos wanted to know.
"I've been searching the Watcher database for Immortals with a tendency to experiment on people using sharp little medical implements," Methos said as he fingered the laptop computer lying on the coffee table, "Guess what? I've got a list long enough to cover the whole damn telephone book."
"Any of them last seen around here?" Kronos asked.
"No," Methos shook his head.
Both could tell what the other was thinking, they'd been together long enough neither had to say anything further for the other to know.
"So now what?" Kronos asked.
"I've got to tell you, I'm running out of ideas," Methos said, "If it's not an Immortal, and this follows no MO in the police department, and we can't find out who this kid is, and she's not missing so's anybody would notice, and she won't tell us where she's been or who the hell is behind this…I don't know where else to look…it's not like we can put an ad in the personals' section in the newspaper, '5000 year old white male seeks person or persons who are into dental extractions and vivisections'."
"Have you seen the personals' ads lately?" Kronos asked him, "Trust me, that wouldn't be the weirdest one."
"Hey," Methos thought of something, "Where's Caspian? He should've been back by now."
"Patience," Kronos said, "You know how long it takes for them to run tests."
"Yes, but this is just matching fingerprints," Methos said, "How long can it take to go through that?"
"Need you ask?" Kronos replied, "Do you have any idea how many people there are in this vicinity alone? And do you want to take a bet on how many of them have already been printed for one reason or another? And how long it's going to take to run one set of prints against all those thousands?"
"He still should've been back by now," Methos insisted.
They both turned to the front door when they felt the quickening of another Immortal.
"His ears must be burning," Kronos said.
The door swung open and Caspian stepped in, looking like somebody had tried to drown him.
"What happened to you?" Methos asked.
"The police station still has standing water, about a good six inches worth of it," Caspian informed them as he peeled off his coat, "Nobody can stand up in there, everybody's falling down, one idiot ran into me and we both hit the floor, and the prints on the book were wiped out in the process."
Methos couldn't believe what he was hearing, "How could that be possible?"
"You've got me, all I know is that once we fished the book out, there weren't any prints on it that they could use to match to anything," Caspian said.
Methos and Kronos turned to look at one another again.
"I don't know what's going on," Methos said, "But it seems fate has it in for us not to find out who this kid is."
"I don't believe in fate," Kronos told him.
"You got another idea to explain this sudden rash of bad luck we've had?" Methos asked.
"Sure, the universe is just waiting for us to get cocky."
"Well?" Caspian said as he rolled up his coat and tossed it away, "Is anybody else interested in giving up?"
Methos hit himself in the head, "Boy are we stupid…why don't we just take her down to the station?"
"For what reason?" Caspian asked.
"Book her on assault charges," Methos said, "After all, she's nearly killed all of us at least once, that way she's right there to print."
Caspian shook his head, "You forget…the second somebody saw those cuts on her body, they'd be all over our asses, first idea they'd have is that we did it to her, and if we didn't, they'd also want to know who did it…and since we don't even know that ourselves, we can't really take a chance on anybody else getting involved, especially those idiotic mortals I work with."
"He's right," Kronos told Methos.
"Alright," Methos said, "What about that knife she had?"
"What about it?" the others asked.
"Silas said if we took it down, it would get them asking questions…it's a most unusual knife, I've certainly never seen one like it before…if they found out where it came from, it would certainly be an area severely narrowed down," Methos said.
"That's also no good," Caspian reminded him, "Let's assume for a moment she took it as a souvenir of sorts…if there's so much as one drop of blood left on it, they'll trace it back to whoever was attacked with it."
"So?" Kronos asked.
"So let's assume that knife was used to cut off somebody's head, we don't need the authorities getting wrapped up in that either," Caspian told him.
"You don't really think she'd…" Methos started to say.
"Why not? She's certainly tried with us already, you said so yourself."
"Yeah, to kill us but she hasn't made any attempt for any of our heads," Methos argued.
"Not yet, but you haven't given her much chance to, have you?" Caspian asked.
"If it'll make you feel any better, she can sleep with you tonight and you can see what she does or doesn't do," Methos told him.
Kronos came between the two brothers and grabbed them by the backs of their collars and was very close to bashing their heads together as he said, "If you two are done arguing like a couple of children…exactly what are we going to do now?"
Methos shook his head, "I don't know, I'm out of ideas, and until something new comes up, I don't have any idea what we're going to do about her."
Caspian looked to his other brother and said, "Hey Kronos, I've got an idea."
"Oh Lord," Methos muttered, "Quick, everybody hit the dirt."
Kronos ignored Methos' rather dry histrionics and said to Caspian, "What've you got in mind?"
Caspian reached over and grabbed Kronos by his jacket and pulled his brother in to him so they could speak in something of privacy without Methos hearing them.
"It might work," Kronos said.
"At this rate I can't see how it would hurt any," Caspian responded.
What the two brothers didn't know was that Methos had heard them. Kronos had been working on his own version of a truth serum for several years, and it had been Caspian's idea that since when a person was under the effects of it, they had no choice but to tell the truth, that the girl wouldn't be capable of maintaining her silence any further. Methos didn't think it would work, but as he said, he didn't have anymore ideas of his own; so if the two of them wanted to try it, let them, that was the way he saw it.
About an hour later, he heard them coming down the stairs and got up from where he lay on the couch and saw Kronos coming down with Caspian behind him.
"Didn't work, eh?" he asked innocently.
"No," Kronos answered.
"I didn't think so," Methos said.
"Oh shut up," Caspian told him.
Methos got up on his knees and looked over the back of the couch at his brothers, "Well, anymore bright ideas, genius?"
"Not yet," Kronos confessed as he collapsed in the chair by the couch, "But I will."
"In the meantime," Methos said, "Can we see about getting her some real clothes to wear? I'm getting tired of seeing her walking around this place looking like she should be in a hospital."
He heard somebody snickering from behind. He looked over the couch's back again and saw Caspian seated over towards the wall.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
"I don't think that's the real reason you're bringing it up," Caspian replied.
"Ah you're all a bunch of perverts," Methos said, "The whole lot of you…believe it or not I have managed to make it 5000 years without jumping everything in a skirt."
"Thank God for that," Caspian remarked, "Weren't you living in Scotland sometime back in the 1700s?"
"Somewhere around there," Methos answered.
"Now look," Kronos told them, "The two of you can dress her up like the ape man for all I care if you just shut up about it."
"Well!" Methos responded as he got up, "Somebody's certainly in a rotten mood today."
He and Caspian headed back up the stairs; their voices trailing off about Kronos' particularly sour demeanor that day, as Kronos lay down on the couch and closed his eyes, grumbling to himself about everything that had gone on in the past couple of days.
About an hour later, Kronos woke up and heard his brothers coming down the stairs, and he was surprised to find Methos and Caspian on either side of the girl as they walked her down, and she was dressed in one of Kronos' shirts and a pair of his jeans.
"I'm going to guess there's a reason behind this?" he asked.
"Yeah," Caspian answered, "The reason is she's too fat to wear our clothes."
The girl balled her hand up into a fist and without even turning to look, reached over and punched Caspian in the gut.
"Well we know now for sure that she's not deaf," Methos said with a slight, amused smile on his face.
Kronos reached over and grabbed the shirt she wore by the seams and pulled at it, the material expanding around her like a tent. He let go of it and then grabbed her by the jeans she wore and pulled at the material and was surprised to find it wouldn't move far from her skin, that her lower body seemed to only be a couple of sizes smaller than his own. He looked over to Methos who just innocently shrugged his shoulders and looked back at him with a familiar look on his face, one that said 'don't look at me, I can't explain it either'. He looked at the girl again and the look on her face clearly said that she wasn't amused by any of it.
"In the process," Methos told him, "We made another discovery."
"What's that?" Kronos asked.
"Get back and we'll show you."
Kronos thought Methos was crazy but he decided to humor them. He stepped back and waited to see what they would do next. Both Methos and Caspian shoved the girl forward, forcing her to walk unassisted, or rather she tried to. Kronos watched as with every other step she took, it seemed to be with great trouble that she raised up her right foot and when she did, it stomped down onto the floor.
"So that's what all that noise was up in the attic," he said, "Her stomping around up there…but what the hell is that?"
"I don't know," Methos said, "I've examined her and I can't find anything wrong with her foot."
Caspian opened his mouth but Methos cut him off, saying, "One smart remark out of you, and I'll rip your spine out through your ear."
"I didn't say anything," Caspian said.
"See to it that you don't," Methos advised him.
Day turned to night with little difference between the two as the sun never came out. As the hours passed in the night, a storm built up outside and the rain could be heard pounding against the house, as could the howling winds and the occasional clap of thunder following a flash of lightning. One by one the four brothers decided to call it a night, until Kronos was the last one remaining downstairs. He wasn't sure why, but he went around making sure all the windows were shut and the doors were locked; he really wasn't interested in getting anymore live-in visitors than they already had.
All the lights were out, and in the dark he made his way through the rooms of the first floor of the house, coming to an unexpected stop in the living room. Lightning flashed and even through the closed blinds, lit up the room, making the girl on the couch perfectly visible. She had changed back into Methos' shirt for the night and was covered with a thin sheet. Kronos thought about the opportunity available to him, and a knowing smirk found its way onto his face.
The girl turned over onto her side and in the process, felt her hand brush up against something. She opened her eyes and saw Kronos staring down at her.
"Get up," he told her.
At first she didn't move, just laid where she was, staring up at him, looking absolutely dumbstruck.
"I know you can hear me now get up," Kronos said the last part through his clenched teeth and reached for her, but she got up from the couch of her own volition. He grabbed her arm and gave her a bit of a shove and told her to go out to the hall and go upstairs, and he was right behind her the whole way.
As soon as she got on the stairs she started to lose her balance and fall, so he grabbed her arm and more or less pulled her up the rest of the way. When they reached the second floor, Kronos went on ahead of her and opened the door to his room. She followed in behind him, turned back to the open doorway and weighed her options. But she knew her fate was already sealed for the night, so she closed the door behind her.
Methos opened his eyes and saw that it was starting to get light in his room. He forced himself out of bed and went over to the window and pulled up the shade to see that the sun wasn't out, but things were getting brighter outside as well. He went back over to his bed and picked up the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was going on six in the morning. With a yawn and a stretch that popped something in his back, Methos got a change of clothes and headed off to the bathroom to get a shower.
As he crossed through the hall, he passed by Kronos' bedroom and saw that the door was slightly ajar. He decided to poke his head in and see if his brother was awake yet. Methos quietly pushed the door open further and look in and was mortified to see the girl in bed with Kronos, laying alongside him.
Though he knew his brother, Methos was still shocked by what he saw. Dumbstruck, he backed away from the door and headed across the hall. He got a quick, cold shower, then dressed and headed downstairs to wait for his brother.
Half an hour later, Kronos descended down the kitchen stairs and found Methos already seated at the table, halfway through a six-pack of beer.
"Well," he said, "You're up early."
"Yeah," Methos replied, "I got one hell of a view earlier."
"Of what?"
"You and that girl."
Kronos stopped and turned on his heel and looked back at Methos, "What do you mean?"
"I saw the two of you in bed together, I always knew you were an old pervert but this just caps it all," Methos said.
Kronos started to laugh, "You really think that I…"
"I know you, Kronos, you're a lot of things but altruistic isn't one of them, if you had her up in your room last night, it was for a reason," Methos said.
"I don't have to explain myself to you," Kronos told him, "Nor do I have to explain what I do, particularly what I do in the privacy of my own room."
The two brothers started yelling at each other and were screaming over each other so neither could be heard coherently; all the while Silas and Caspian were making their way down the stairs with the girl in between them, and they stopped on the third step when they took in the spectacle below.
"If you two are done squabbling like a couple of ducks," Caspian told them as they walked down the last few steps.
The two brothers broke up the fight and backed away from each other and to a separate corner of the kitchen.
Methos turned and watched the way the girl walked down the stairs and across the room, always struggling to pick up her right foot and when it finally came up it slammed down on the floor, and a new thought came to him, "Watch how she walks again, does something about it look familiar to you?"
Both Kronos and Caspian watched as the girl tried to walk over to the other side of the room, always with that exaggerated difficulty involving her right foot.
"I get it," Kronos finally said, "She was shackled."
"More than that," Methos said, "If I had to guess, I'd say…somebody put her in an Oregon boot."
Kronos' eyes widened when he heard that and even Caspian appeared shocked at the suggestion.
"Those things haven't been used since the 40s," he said.
"Why not?" Methos asked as he looked over at Kronos, "We said before this seems to be the work of somebody who loves the old ways best. I think we hit the nail on the head."
"Exactly what kind of sick bastard are we dealing with?" Kronos asked.