"Oregon boots, you remember those, don't you, Silas?" Methos asked.

"Not fondly," he replied, "30 pound rings locked around one ankle; killed a lot of prisoners that way, damn near killed plenty more."

"Worked damn well for prison control though," Caspian commented as they headed up the stairs, "They ought to bring that back, even today with the electrified barbed wire fences and the armed guards, they still have people breaking out every damn day of the week, medium security, maximum security, it doesn't matter, if somebody's determined enough to bust out, they'll find a way."

"As apparently she did," Methos said, pertaining to the girl downstairs, "The question is how? Those things need keys, don't they?"

The other three brothers all answered, over one another, that theirs certainly did.

"That's what I thought," he continued.

"So how exactly did she get out of hers?" Silas seemed to be catching on to what Methos was getting at.

"Obviously somebody let her out of it," Methos said.

Caspian stopped on the stair and Methos walked into him. Caspian turned around and said, "And just how do you figure that?"

"Because when she came here she was wearing those awful clothes, they didn't fit her at all, meaning that she got them from somewhere else, meaning she had none of her own, meaning hers were taken away from her, probably, I'm guessing, at the same time she was taken out of that damn boot, because its brace would have to hook onto the shoe she wore, you know that."

Silas laughed and commented, "You should've graduated the police academy instead of this thing," as he pointed to Caspian.

"So now what?" Caspian asked.

"It's not much to go on but it is something," Methos said, "I'll go back and check the chronicles and see if anybody fits in this description, you go over your files and see if there're any criminals who have a thing for shackling their victims."

Caspian leaned over towards Kronos and said, "Have I told you lately that I hate him?"

"Yes."

Caspian paused and then added, "Today?"

"Come on," Methos said.

"Unfortunately for us," Methos said as he closed his laptop, "Most of the Immortals who have a penchant for hobbling their victims have already been laid out in their own graves, permanently."

"Old age finally caught up with them, did it?" Kronos asked coyly.

"Yes, in the name of some damn do-gooder challenge," Methos replied as he lifted his feet up onto the couch, "I hope Caspian's having better luck than we are. He went down to the police station to check their computer files to see if anybody matches what we've found."

"Why'd he go down there again?" Kronos asked.

"Well let's face it, looking for somebody who likes to chain heavy weights on people's feet, a practice that hasn't been used in this severity in this civilized country for over 50 years, isn't exactly something you can explain on the phone and have somebody else check out," Methos reminded him.

"True. Where's the girl?"

"Oh, Silas has her…" Methos tried to remember, "Somewhere, keeping her mind occupied."

"What mind?" Kronos asked as he fell down on the couch beside his brother.

"Oh come now, Kronos, you don't mean to tell me you're going to start underestimating her now," Methos said, "She broke into our home several times, all of which without our knowledge and has tried to kill nearly all of us…sheer psychosis alone isn't enough to pull all that off, she had to do some planning for it somewhere."

"I suppose so."

"You know, Kronos, I've been thinking."

"What about now?" he asked.

"Alright, we've established that this kid had to be locked up somewhere, for an extended amount of time…what if she was trained not to speak?"

"I don't get it," Kronos said.

"If she was, maybe she can be retrained to talk again," Methos said.

"Okay," Kronos was willing to entertain the idea, "How?"

Methos shrugged and said, "Same way you do with a child, I guess, start with one word at a time and work your way up."

"You're crazy," Kronos told him, "She understands every word that we say."

"How can you be sure?" Methos asked.

"I know."

Methos laughed and responded, "Don't be so sure of yourself, you've been wrong before."

"So have you," Kronos said, "You don't see me second guessing everything you're doing."

Methos turned to look at Kronos and said nothing, only glared at him.

"It doesn't make sense," Caspian said later when he returned from the precinct.

"I'll bite," Methos said, "What doesn't make sense?"

"That girl," he answered, "Every time she walks, she picks that foot up and drops it, like a zombie, over and over and over, if you can call that walking."

"Yeah, so what?" Methos asked.

"Are you forgetting that the night she shish-kabobbed you, after she used you as a bowling ball, she turn around and ran for the window and jumped out of it?"

"That's only about ten feet," Methos said.

"It doesn't matter, the fact remains that on that night, she ran to get out of here…why now is she dragging that foot?"

"Oh come on, Caspian, you know as well as I do that when it's a matter of life and death, people will do extraordinary things they ordinarily can't do."

"Oh yeah? Then how come she hadn't the brains to get out of this place?"

"You said yourself that night we had two feet standing water, how the hell was she supposed to get back to town in that?" Methos asked.

"That's just it, nothing about this whole ordeal is making any sense," Caspian remarked.

"I think that's the point," Methos said.

Caspian glanced over at his brother and commented, "You know sometimes you strike me as being a very weird person."

Methos choked on a laugh and returned, "Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle broken. Meanwhile did you find anything out at the station?"

"No!" Caspian answered, "It's like wherever this kid was, to get from there to here she must've just fallen out of the sky."

"The sky doesn't have people fitting this description," Methos reminded his brother, "They generally dwell in a more southern region."

Caspian looked back at his brother again and told him, "Don't be a smartass."

"Sorry. Anyway, an idea came to me earlier," Methos told him.

"What?"

"I was thinking about the same thing, and I thought maybe if we can scare her, she would run, or at least make an attempt at it."

"Yeah but you forget," Caspian responded, "This girl's been hobbled, cut open, and had people shooting at her…exactly what can we do that's going to scare her after that?"

"That's the only part I haven't been able to figure out yet," Methos admitted, his cheeks showing a little color.

The two brothers stood in the middle of the room, looking off at nothing in particular, trying to come up with an answer to that question. Methos cocked his head to the side and looked Caspian up and down, and chuckled, but ultimately shook his head and said, "No, that wouldn't do it."

Kronos turned on the lights to the basement as he headed down the stairs. He wanted to make sure that nobody had been down here recently and gotten into his work. So far everything looked normal. Nothing had been touched as far as he could tell. The floor had large chains lying near the metal table they'd put the girl on when they first found her. Past that was where he did his work and the primary reason he spent many hours down here when the four of them came up to the house.

On one table there rested several dozen test tubes full of liquids: all different kinds, all made for different reasons, most of them were still in the experimental stage, he hadn't been able to prove most of them worthy of doing what they were supposed to yet. His truth serum definitely needed some improvement…he sorted through the others until he found the one he wanted.

The liquid in the glass tube was as clear as water. Microscopic bubbles ran up and down in the formula, not unlike when it was first cooked up on the Bunsen burner and kept there until it reached its boiling point. It was still, like most of the others, in its experimental stage and he had no definite proof that it would work; but he believed he'd researched it enough that it should. Yes, this was the one he wanted, and he was going to use it on that girl, as soon as he had the chance, and he knew now that he would have a perfect opportunity later that night when the others had gone to bed. Oh, he knew that Methos wouldn't forget what had happened that morning, and he would probably try to stop Kronos, but that was Methos' problem; he always thought he knew better than the others, and Methos would have to learn to get over that. Tonight, Kronos knew as he looked down at the glass tube in his hand, his experiment would finally be properly tested, and that girl was just the specimen he was looking for.

"Okay," Methos said, "Let's think about this for a minute…nobody fitting either this girl's description, or the modus operandi of whoever was holding her captive, can be found in the Watcher chronicles, or in the police archives. She is not listed as currently missing from anywhere, meaning either she isn't missing, or she is and whoever had her is just glad to be rid of her. And to top it off, we've got the damn Murphy's Law interrupting any further attempts to identify her."

"Sounds about right," Caspian told him.

"Well, got anymore bright ideas?" Methos asked.

"One," he answered, "We could always tie her up and dump her over the state line, we'd be rid of her and it could never be tied back to us."

"See? This is why we don't let you have a pet," Methos remarked cynically, "But there's one thing I'd like to know."

"What's that?" Caspian asked.

"The first night she was here…what was she doing up in the attic?"

"Hiding from us."

"I don't know…she'd obviously been in here a while, she had the opportunity to break in and out of this place more than once, she had to know the layout of the house…so what was she stomping around up there for?"

"I don't know," Caspian said, "Nothing was out of place up there."

"Are you sure?" Methos asked.

Caspian saw that look on Methos' face and he rolled his eyes, grumbling, "We're spending more time up in that attic than any other room in the whole damn house."

"Come on," Methos pulled his brother up and they cut through the dining room out to the hall and headed up the stairs.

When they reached the third floor, they made short work of finding the right room.

"We were in this one and Kronos was in the next one," Methos remembered as they headed in and gestured and pointed around the room, "And we came in through the side door, so we were here, he was there and she was here…"

"What are you doing?" Caspian asked, "Recreating the night, or laying out a football game plan?"

Methos looked around the room and went to the door adjoining that room to the next, "She had to know this was here, she knew we came in and she couldn't have heard us, we were too quiet…so she was probably next door too."

"This reminds me of the part of my job that I hate," Caspian told Methos, "Covering every square inch of a crime scene looking for something and almost always finding nothing…what the hell are we looking for anyway?"

"I don't know," Methos responded, "Let me think…we heard her, she was walking around up here, dropping that foot every step she took, and what else? It sounded like the whole damn place was being ripped apart."

That was when an idea hit him. He went over to one of the trunks, unlocked it, opened it and slammed the lid shut. The sound didn't match what he'd heard that night. He looked around the trunk to see if anything looked out of place.

"Aha!"

"Aha what?" Caspian asked.

"Look," Methos pointed down to the floor by the trunk.

There were some black marks in the floor, indicating that the trunk had been clumsily moved recently. He checked the next trunk, and on the floor by it were similar markings, and over on the other side of the room, he checked out the table and saw it also had dark marks on the floor near its feet.

"She was moving everything out and putting everything back," Methos said.

"Great, but why?" Caspian wanted to know.

"I don't know…she couldn't have been looking for anything, could she?"

"If she was, she clearly didn't find it," Caspian replied, "There's nothing around here worth finding, especially not up here."

Methos looked around the room once more and took in every square inch of the place; decorated over the years by the things they'd brought out of their pasts, every item in the room a piece of memorabilia from a certain point in their lives. What could it all have to do with that kid? That was the one question he didn't know the answer to.

"I'm trying to consider what's going on here from every possible angle," Methos told Caspian as they headed down the stairs again, "I'm trying to conceive every possible reason for this, and a few that are impossible."

"Well that's great," Caspian dryly remarked, "In your next life you can get a job writing mystery novels."

"I'm serious," Methos said, the only other noise in the house besides their bickering being the noise of their boots clattering against the stairs on the way down to the first floor.

By the time they reached the foot of the stairs, they were about to bite each other's heads off, and that continued as they made their way into the kitchen. They were oblivious to Silas's presence there until he got between the two of them and threatened to beat them both into the floor if they didn't shut up.

"What's eating you?" Methos asked, then quickly added as Caspian started to talk, "Shut up, Caspian."

It was then that they noticed the girl was in the room as well; seated over at the table in a change of Kronos' clothes and looking bored out of her mind.

"What's she doing down here?" Caspian asked.

"She went for a little walk," Silas sarcastically remarked, "Or rather crawl."

Methos felt his eyes strain as they widened, "You pushed her down the stairs?"

"I don't know why you're surprised," Silas said, "She's like a cat, she lands on all fours."

Methos went over to the table and looked the girl over. She looked at him but didn't make eye contact with him. Methos reached out and grabbed her hand and turned it over, showing a new bruise starting to form.

"She landed alright, but hard from the looks of it," he commented. It was then that he noticed the bruise was of an odd shape, "What is this? The top of the banister?"

"The corner of the top stair," Silas answered, "Apparently she falls at an angle."

Methos let go of the girl's hand and said only in response to his brother, "You know sometimes you worry me."

"You worry too much, Methos," Silas told him.

"I've been telling him that for years," Caspian added, "But did anybody listen? Nooooo."

"Oh shut up, Caspian," the other two brothers told him.

"Hey, what do you know?" Methos asked, smiling a little, "For once it's not me getting yelled at."

Methos made the rounds of checking everything before he went to bed that night; making sure the doors were locked, the windows were closed, the lights were out, and above all else, that he was the last one up.

Of course he knew, if Kronos had his mind set on having that girl in his bed again, that's just what he would do. Unfortunately he didn't have any grounds to try and interfere, and he knew it. The days of we share everything were thousands of years in the past, but the fact remained that none of them had any idea who that girl was, and in that regard she belonged to nobody, meaning she was up for the taking of anybody who wanted her, and that just happened to be Kronos. Of course, he knew he had the option of taking the girl up with him for the night, putting her in his room…but he also knew if he did that, he'd be open to the scrutiny of his brothers; his reasons for doing it wouldn't matter, he'd be made out to be no better than Kronos, and he knew he couldn't fight that when he didn't have any proof of just what did happen the other night.

And then there was always that third option, he was too well aware of. True, this girl, whoever she was, whatever she was, she clearly had no idea what she would become some day; she couldn't run, she couldn't call out for help and she was clearly outnumbered and could easily be overpowered, but her will was strong and she had proven herself capable of doing what she saw necessary to protect herself when she saw fit. The fact that when examining her, they'd found no evidence of sexual assault, said to Methos that that was one thing she hadn't been subjected to, let alone forced to adapt to; so it stood to reason if she felt threatened in any way, she would attack Kronos, or at least try to…that was the one thing that she couldn't do quietly and they all knew that from personal experience.

And maybe he was wrong. Maybe nothing had happened, but if that were the case, what the hell was Kronos doing with her last night? His brother certainly hadn't made any attempt to clear the air, of course Kronos was never much for talking, and he never liked having to explain himself. Especially, Methos knew, when he felt his authority being questioned by his own brothers, he hated that.

He stood by the couch and looked down at the girl who was in a dead sleep and at face value, didn't seem to have a care in the world. He knew nothing could be further from the truth, but it was late, he was tired and he didn't feel like sitting up the whole night to find out what Kronos wanted with Sleeping Beauty there. Sure it was heartless on his part, but it was still one of his sides, and to deny any part of himself would be to deny himself in whole. As he reached the foot of the stairs, he stopped and craned his neck around to look back to the living room. He'd keep an ear open for any unusual noises in the night, and if he heard anything coming from Kronos' room, he'd deal with the matter then, not before.

What Methos had forgotten was that when the house was built, several of the rooms, Kronos' specifically, had been made virtually soundproof. That was one thing in Kronos' favor for the night. About an hour after Methos had come upstairs and fallen asleep, Kronos left his room on the other side of the hall and made his way down the stairs in the dark and returned to the living room. There the girl remained, asleep and unaware of what was to become her fate. He jerked the girl out of sleep and pulled her to her feet and dragged her out into the hall and up the stairs and over to his room, where he promptly locked the door behind them.

Once inside, Kronos made short work of stripping the girl of her clothes. She struggled with him over the matter, but it was a quiet matter quickly resolved when he locked an arm around her throat and cut off her air. Just before she fell into unconsciousness, he let go of her and removed her clothes and pulled her over to the bed, where he threw her down, gagged her and chained her wrists to the headboard and spread her legs apart to chain her ankles at the footboard.

The girl briefly struggled with the chains but it was to no avail. As she lay there squirming and wriggling, trying to figure a way out, Kronos went over to the table on the other side of the room and picked up the vial he'd collected from the basement. The girl saw it, and while she didn't know what it was, she had a good idea of what was going to happen to her. Her eyes widened and she tried to scream, but very little noise made it past the gag in her mouth. She continued pulling and jerking at the chains but it did no good, though Kronos delighted in watching her struggle.

"This time my dear," he said with an evil smirk on his face as he closed in on her, "You're not going anywhere…no clever escapes, nothing lying around for you to try and bash me over the head with…oh no," he shook his head as that sinister grin widened, "This time, you're mine."

He reached the bed and in one move, jumped on the bed and straddled her waist, throwing his body weight on her and pinning her flat against the mattress. She groaned and tried to scream at the sudden weight pressing down on her, but it was quickly forgotten as she saw him take the lid off the vial and hold the small glass bottle directly over her chest.

Slowly, he turned the vial upside down and the first few drops slowly dripped out of the bottle's spout and landed between her breasts, and she screamed through the gag as her skin started to burn. A few more drops landed on her skin below that, and the burning got worse. But she knew Kronos was only toying with her; he snapped off the spout and let the acidic liquid pour directly out over the length of her body. Tears sprang forth from her closed eyes as she screamed as loud as the gag would allow, which still wasn't loud enough to be heard by anybody else in the house. The look on Kronos' face told her that this was just the beginning and that it was going to be a long night from hell.