The girl hadn't broken anything in the fall, but she had bashed up both arms and one leg and had trouble moving and Methos and Silas pulled her up and walked her back into the house, where once inside, they all demanded answers from their guest. The girl groaned as they set her down in a chair at the dining room table.

"So," Kronos finally said to her, "You can talk."

"Yes I can talk, you idiot," she replied, "I can talk, I can move, I can run," she sarcastically added, "I can also mime."

Caspian hit her in the side of the head and told her to shut up.

"Why did you come here?" Kronos wanted to know.

"Well it sure as hell wasn't for the pleasant hospitality," she told him.

"If you could talk this whole time why didn't you say anything?" Methos asked her.

"Never mind that, if you could walk and run, why have you been hobbling around this place all week?" Caspian added.

"Because I wanted to see just how long it would take you boobs to put it all together without any cues from me, and it only took you a week," she clearly was not impressed, "What finally clued you in?"

Caspian was tired of her smart remarks and he hit her again, but this time she retaliated by hitting him. Her arm swung clumsily and she couldn't ball her hand up into a fist tightly but she hit him regardless. Before he could strike her again, Methos had the presence of mind to ask to see his brothers in the other room alone for a minute. From where they stood in the kitchen, they could still keep an eye on the girl and make sure she didn't try for the door. Methos said to Caspian and Silas, "You two have been working in the police force here for a long time now, are either of you familiar with that case in the paper?"

"No," Caspian answered.

Silas shook his head, "The name's familiar though, it's not our jurisdiction, I think I read about it when it came out…if I remember right, the three people murdered were a man, a woman and a child in a diner over in Seacouver."

"That would mean a crowd, not enough time to do anything particularly brutal like the paper said," Methos commented.

"You know how people are today, any manner of killing someone is considered cruel and unusual, inhumane, barbaric," Caspian went off the list.

"Pointlessly barbaric," Methos said and he quoted, "Millions of deaths are a statistic but one is a tragedy."

"They have no stomach for anything anymore," Caspian said, "It's a wonder any of them even eat meat."

"We're getting off base here," Methos told him, "How in the hell could that girl wind up in an insane asylum? If she did kill anybody, we all know very well that she's in her right mind, she knows exactly what she's doing."

"I'm more interested in finding out how she broke out," Kronos said, "Is it just her, or is the whole city full of these nuts running around?"

"Do you really think she'll tell us?" Methos asked.

"There's only one way to find out."

They went back in the dining room, where the girl hadn't moved from her chair, and Methos said point blank, "How did you escape from that asylum?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she asked smugly.

Caspian kicked her foot and told her to shut up.

The girl retaliated by grabbing his wrist and turning it around and said, "I seem to recall taking about three inches of flesh out of this wrist and here it is again, good as new, would you care to explain that one or why you're up and walking around again after I cut your spinal cord in two like an old rope?"

Caspian pulled away from her, and Kronos demanded to know, "Why did you come here?"

She lowered her head and answered, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Something occurred to Methos and he leaned in towards Caspian to ask him, but Kronos told him to speak up so they could all hear it.

"I said why did the newspaper only report her missing now when she's been gone a week? What the hell is going on over in Seacouver?"

"Oh they finally got around to that, did they?" the girl asked as she picked her head up again, "I knew you were too stupid to figure it out on your own…what're they saying about me, anyway?"

This time, Methos hit her in the head and told her, "Nothing that concerns you, Francesca."

"Who?" she asked.

"You."

"What did you call me?" she sprang to her feet like he'd insulted her.

"Now don't play dumb, that's your name, Francesca Giardello."

"Giardello?" she repeated the word like it was an obscenity, "A Giardello, me? That's not my name, not by a long shot."

"Oh no?" Methos found the newspaper and tossed it down in front of her, "Then explain that."

She gazed at the front story and looked back at them and said, "That's my picture but that's not my name. Giardello, of all the absurd ideas! Do I look like an Italian to you?" to emphasize her point, her hands flew into a series of wild gestures as she spoke.

Methos was starting to get a headache, he hated these mind games.

"That's your picture but it's not your name?" he repeated.

"That's right, nothing they've printed in that story about me's right," she told them.

"Nothing, huh?" Methos looked over the article and said, "It says you're 21, is that wrong also?"

"Hell yes it is, they had to say that to put my picture in the paper, I'm only 16!" she told them.

Methos felt like he'd just fallen through the looking glass. "What?"

"You heard me," she said, "And my name isn't Francesca Giardello either, it's Fagan Willerby."

Methos looked to Kronos and asked to see him in the next room again. They went back into the kitchen, leaving the others out in the dining room, and the first thing Kronos had to say was, "Well?"

"Fagan is hardly a common name, it was the name of a lion that lived over 40 years ago, I highly doubt she'd know that," Methos said, "The whole thing sounds too crazy not to be true."

"You really believe her?" Kronos sounded surprised.

"I think so," Methos replied, "It'll depend on what she tells us next."

"I suppose next you're going to say you didn't kill those three people either," Methos said when they returned to interrogate the girl.

"What three people?" she asked.

"The three people in the diner," Methos pointed to the paper, "It's in there, two parents and a small child, you're going to tell us you didn't kill them?"

She shook her head, "No."

"And what, you were never supposed to be in that asylum either?" Methos asked.

"All I know is they put me away on murders I didn't commit," she said, "They made sure I could never be found."

"You want to explain that again?" he asked, "From what you've said, with your picture there's a name and an age that aren't yours, the murders credited to you, you didn't commit, how is that possible?"

"Well it is," she insisted, "I keep telling you morons, I'm Fagan Willerby, and I'm 16 years old, I never killed any family in any diner…"

"Then why were you arrested?"

"Because they needed a scapegoat and I was a good target for it," she said.

"How?"

"I'm not the only one, everybody in Grayson's like that, all in for things they never did, under names that aren't theirs."

"Right, how does that work?" Methos asked, "People check the names against the fingerprints taken at the time of arrest."

"That's just it," Fagan told them, "You check my prints again the ones on file for the name Francesca Giardello, you'll see they don't match."

Now they were all lost. "How is that possible?" Caspian asked.

"There's something screwy going on over there," she said, "The police in Seacouver who arrested me are screws in the truest form, they busted me, took me in, they had a friend whose prints aren't on file get printed, filed them under my name, and they changed my name so nobody involved could ever find out who I was or where I came from. Francesca Giardello doesn't exist, she never did, they gave me that name so they wouldn't have to worry about anybody finding me in that nuthouse. When I was taken to court for the indictment, I told the judge that wasn't my name, the prosecutor said I was stoned out of my mind and didn't know anything, and the judge believed him. I got railroaded, somebody said I was crazy, so instead of throwing me in prison, they bussed me off to Grayson, nobody would believe this place…compared to it, Arkham Asylum looks like the fun house at Coney Island. This place sends mental hospitals back at least a hundred years."

"That would explain it," Caspian said.

Fagan glared at him and told him, "You don't know the half of it, nobody does. That place is worse than the death camps, nobody knows what's going on over there, and nobody gets out alive to tell either."

"Except you," Methos said.

"Nothing I ever did warranted the treatment I got," she said, "No matter what those damn papers said, I never kill kids, they haven't done anything to deserve it."

Methos was surprised, "But you have killed."

"Oh sure," she said, "I've got a good track record going, 15 men so far." They could tell that this time she was being serious as she spoke.

"How?" Methos asked.

"All in different ways," she answered, "The first one was so simple and over so quickly, it was very anticlimactic and very unsatisfying."

"And how old were you?"

"I was 13," she said, "Choked a man to death, broke his neck at the last second, and do you want to know why I did it? Because he annoyed me, and he was a lot less irritating to listen to than you four morons have been."

Caspian moved to hit her again but Kronos pulled him back, saying only, "Let her talk. I want to hear this."

"Oh, you want all the sordid details, do you?" Fagan asked, then she laughed, "Well I'll gladly give them to you. Let me think, it's been a while…the second one I killed…he was a real bastard, I filled a cup with lighter fluid, went up to him, threw it on them and started lighting matches and throwing them at him. Oooooh he screamed so much, and then when he finally caught on fire…"

Methos listened to what she said and he couldn't believe it. He may have killed 10,000 people, hell, he'd killed more than that, but that was 2,000 years ago, he was different now, and now it was turning his stomach to hear the graphic descriptions coming from the young girl who relived every murder she committed with such nostalgia and such passion that she seemed almost orgasmic by the recount. He listened as she talked about beating one man to death with a tire iron, another she had thrown acid in his face before finally killing him; there had been another that she had stabbed 200 times and she added how any time the blade hit against a bone, it sent a small vibration back to her teeth that knocked them together. Then there was another that hadn't been anything special, she had only stomped that one to death, but it had been a very satisfactory death. Another time, she had taken a wire out of a piano and in a spur of the moment, wrapped it around the man's neck and tightened it until she had practically cut his head off with it; and then another, who she had spent hours torturing, one by one breaking every single bone in his body before finally putting him out of his misery.

"And then the others are the real kick in the head," Fagan concluded, "Those are the ones that the bodies will never be found."

"Why not?" Methos asked.

"I was living down by the docks at that time, I liked to rent boats and go out on the water, and there was a place that sold chum for fishing, the idea was wait until dark, always on nights when there was no moon out, and make sure nobody was around…get the guy on the boat and go out into the sea…knock him off the boat and when he's flopping around in the water, pour the chum on him. Sharks attack within five feet away from the shore, they can smell a drop of blood from a mile away, there was never long to wait for the water to bubble and then those people became Jaws' midnight snack. Sharks have been documented as eating entire suits of armor, they'd never leave behind remains of one measly person."

"And you figured all of that out by 15?" Methos asked.

"Child prodigy, I like it," Kronos commented.

Fagan sneered at him and replied, "You would."

"And you're saying that everybody in that place was set up like you were?" Methos asked, "Are they all like you or did they actually not kill anybody?"

"It doesn't matter what they did or didn't do," Fagan said, "Because nobody's ever going to find out, they're going to die in that place. They're all ripe for the picking, they either have no families or they're only related to the shut-ins at the state prison and so have no credibility, and no friends in court. Either way, if they disappear, nobody's going to know, let alone care. They got no money, no authority, no connections, nobody owes them any favors, nobody remembers their faces…they get busted on trumped up charges of murders somebody else committed…then the police and the lawyers get a friend shrink to come in and tell the judge they're crazy, and the hospital mental wards are already full up with overpopulation. So Grayson's the only asylum in the town and it's easier than moving them somewhere into another city, so they go there…Grayson's miles away from civilization, nobody ever just stumbles upon that place, and that's intentional. The staff running it are sadists you wouldn't imagine…"

"Why? What do they do?" Methos asked.

"As if you don't know already," Fagan told him, "Oregon boots, electroshock therapy," she lifted up her shirt and added, "Autopsy practice on living test dummies, you name it, they do it, and they know they can get away with it." She looked to Caspian and said, "You're exactly like the others."

"What others?"

"At the asylum, the…the leader, he's like you, one time another patient tried to stab him, grabbed a bunch of pencils and jammed them into his chest, but he lived, not only that he recovered, in a few minutes there was no hole sticking in the middle of his chest, just like you. He especially has some screwed up experiments in mind…he picks a bunch of people and kills them, and nobody knows what he does, but when he does kill them, the whole place explodes in sparks and the power surges. You'd think they were all getting the electric chair, like that song about Massachusetts and the lights go out, but that's one thing we know for fact that they don't have there and that's the chair. So if it's not that, what the hell is going on when he kills them?"

Kronos and Methos turned and looked at each other and without either saying a word, they knew that this was not going to end well.

"We need to take this one step at a time," Methos said, "First, we'll find out if she's telling the truth about her arrest cover up, and then we'll set our sights on Grayson."

"That's a good idea," Caspian said, and then to Fagan he said, "Do you have any objections to that?"

"To what?" she asked.

"Having your prints taken to clarify what you've told us," he answered.

She looked at him funny. "Fingerprints? Oh sure," she nodded, "I'll give you fingerprints, a whole lot of them!" With that, she lunged at Caspian and wrapped her hands around his neck and they fell to the floor wrestling with each other.

Methos moved to step in and help, but Kronos stopped him and said, "Let them alone, I want to watch this."

Kronos, Methos and Silas watched as Caspian and the girl rolled around on the ground for several minutes, each trying to throw the other one off and/or choke the life out of each other, and then when that failed they both resorted to biting.

Methos chuckled humorlessly and said, "If ever we needed an apprentice."

"Well we don't," Kronos told him.

"It's too bad though," Methos told his brother, "She's got the heart for the work."

They finally stepped in and pulled the two bloodthirsty creatures off of each other, ending an even fight and no winner declared.

"That's enough out of you," Kronos said as he grabbed her neck and gradually tightened his hold, "Now you're going to hold still and get your prints taken so we can find out if you're lying to us or not."

"Why would I?" she asked, "Do you really think I'd make up something like that?"

"Everything else you've done turned out to be an act, why shouldn't this?" he demanded to know.

"Because I never lied to you about anything, you drew your own conclusions on that one," she told him.

Kronos squeezed her neck a little harder until she shut up, then he let go of her.

"Where do you come from originally?" Methos asked her.

"What's that matter?" she asked.

"Somebody had to know you somewhere," he said.

"I was living down in Salem for a while," she said.

"You don't sound like it."

"What?" she asked.

"You don't sound like a resident, you talk strange, where do you come from?" Caspian demanded to know.

She smugly answered, "Lots of different places."

Caspian moved to charge at her again but he was jerked back by his brother.

They got Fagan's prints on a card and Caspian headed back to the police station to run hers against the ones under her alias. While his brothers waited for him to return, they tried to find out more about their houseguest.

"You don't remember where you come from, do you remember your family?" Methos asked.

"Don't have one," she said, "I'm what you call a…a…a…a…"

Kronos hit her on the back to break up the stutter, "A what?"

"I'm what you'd call a foundling, had no parents, just wound up on somebody's doorstep one day I guess, or in the trash or something…somebody found me, they raised me, but I haven't seen them in several years."

At least that part came as no surprise to them.

"But you don't remember where you came from?" Methos asked.

"No, my memory's not so good, seems I was always moving around…" she laughed, "Could never sit still for too long, got bored and when I was bored I'd get into a lot of trouble."

Methos chuckled and remarked, "I wouldn't think what's been going on here for the past week could be called boring, though."

"My stay here hasn't been as crazy as you'd think," Fagan told him, "Ever since I came here, it's been the first time in four months that I've had access to water, soap, food, a bed, clothes, even your oddball idea of medical care…compared to Grayson Institute for the Criminally Insane, this place has been a Shangri-la."

That told Methos just how bad things had to be in the asylum for her present living conditions to be so tolerable.

"Yes, how did you break out of there, anyway?" Kronos asked, "It sounds like the place is run very tightly."

"Tighter than a drunk in a wine cellar," Fagan said, "Nobody's managed to get out of there alive except me."

"But how?" Methos asked.

Before she could answer, Caspian returned and they saw that he looked sick.

"What happened?" Kronos asked.

"What'd you find out?" Methos asked.

"I checked the prints against the ones on file for Francesca Giardello…" he shook his head, "They're not even similar. I checked and there's only one Francesca Giardello on the records, the same one who fits the description in the paper and the picture of this one here," he pointed to Fagan.

"She was telling the truth," Methos said, "You know what that means."

"I do and I wish I didn't," Kronos replied.