"Where is this asylum?" Methos asked Fagan.
"You'll never be able to find it," she said.
"Why do you think we're asking you?" he replied.
"Are you kidding me?" she asked, "I'm hoping to God I forget where it is, I have no intention of ever going back there. And I know how that sounds, but believe me by this time, most of the people locked up in that place are either dead already or death will be a sweet relief compared to how they are now."
"What about the others?" Methos asked, "Aren't there still new patients being administered there?"
"Oh, constantly!" she said, "We must have 500 people there right now, and always new ones coming in."
"But nobody knows where this place is?" Kronos said.
"I didn't say that, I said you'll never find it," she said, "Check all the town and state maps and directories, it's not listed anywhere."
"That's not possible," Methos said.
"You…" Fagan looked like she was about to burst out laughing, "You people regenerate your flesh and your bones in a mere matter of minutes and you want to tell me what's impossible?"
"Alright, where is it?"
"Like I said, you'd never find it," she replied, "I'd have to take you there."
Methos and Kronos crowded in on her and said, "Well?"
"Well what?" she replied, "If you think I'm taking you two fruitcakes to see that place, you're nuttier than I am."
"Oh I'd say that was a safe bet from the beginning," Methos told her.
They heard somebody clearing his throat and saw it was Silas, who asked to see his brothers in the kitchen, immediately.
"Don't go anywhere," Kronos told Fagan.
"Very funny."
They joined Silas and Caspian in the kitchen and inquired what was the matter.
"If she's not going to tell us where the place is," Caspian said, "We'll have to find out ourselves, somebody has to know somewhere."
"Seacouver's out of your jurisdiction though," Methos said, "Let's assume she's telling the truth about the asylum, why would anybody tell us where it is?"
"Somebody has to know and we have to find it out," Silas told his brother, "I want to find out how far this thing has gone. We have a lot of missing person cases that have never been solved, most of the people missing are somewhere around that girl's age, some older but not by much. I want to know, are they all locked up in this mental hospital? If they are, are they still alive, or are they already dead? Will we even find any remains of them there when we finally get there? And going by what she said about the murders, it sounds like they've got a lot of Immortals up there to experiment on."
"Or pre-Immortals," Methos said, "In which case there would be no Watchers files on any of them yet."
"And there never will be," Kronos added.
"Which brings us to the next question, are all the people who have been disappearing from this state over the past couple years Immortals, and if they are, how many of them are even still alive?" Silas asked.
"But we've been over this before," Methos said, "Compared to what she went through in that loony bin, there's hardly anything we can do that will force her to talk."
"I don't know," Kronos replied, "I think there's a way, we just have to figure it out."
"Well if she didn't talk when you were burning her skin off," Methos reminded him, "I don't think she will now."
"However, you'll notice since she broke her cover and started talking, she hasn't stopped yet," Kronos said, "Maybe it'll slip out with a little persuasion."
"In the meantime," Methos addressed his other brothers, "If you two want to start picking through the hangnails on Seacouver's long arm of the law and see if any of them can tell you where Grayson is, go ahead."
"It'd be easier if we had someone to send up there," Caspian said.
Methos laughed and remarked, "Good luck with that." He turned and saw the slight, mischievous look of amusement on Kronos's face and asked, "And what bird are you trying to swallow, Heathcliff?"
"I've got an idea," Kronos told him, "About how we might be able to get the answers out of that kid."
"Oh don't tell me you've got a rubber hose saved over from the old days," Methos said.
"Contrary to popular belief, brother, I am capable of more than just bashing in people's skulls," Kronos said, "That's the approach she's most likely expecting, but we're not going to lay a hand on her."
"Good, who knows where she's been?" Methos cynically remarked, "So what did you have in mind?"
"Nothing," Kronos answered.
"What?"
"As much as she's talking now, she's bound to trip over her tongue eventually," Kronos explained, "In the meantime we'll just stand by and screw with her head."
"Psychological warfare," Methos said, "I like it."
"Besides, there's plenty of other stuff I want to find out and I have a feeling she'll be only too eager to share that information with us," Kronos added.
Methos reappeared in the living room with an ominous smirk on his face and he carried a bottle in one hand and a couple of glasses in the other.
"Would you like a drink?" he asked.
"Depends, what is it?" Fagan asked.
She took the bottle from him and read the label. "Whiskey…no vodka, eh? Oh well, it'll do." She took the lid off and started guzzling it.
"Hey!"
Fagan spit it out in a mist and said, "Sorry," handing him the bottle.
"Never mind," he replied, then, taking another approach, "Have you been drinking long?"
"As far back as I can remember," she said, "Which isn't very far, I told you before my memory's not so good."
"Whose is?" he asked, "You said you were in Grayson for four months?"
"Oh yeah," she nodded, "Four full months in hell, all seven circles."
Kronos reentered the living room as Methos asked her, "What the hell did they do to you there?"
"You name it," she said, "Let's see, first when they bring everybody in they usually cut their clothes off…because you know, on the off chance that you could escape," she snorted, "You'd have one hell of a time finding your way back to town like that. After that…every day blurs together, there's no beginning, no end, everything's just ongoing, nothing stops because the day's over…the butchers they call doctors take people off one or two at a time, and leave the rest just standing around waiting, wondering when they're next. One by one everybody's pinned down from the start, and shot full of drugs so they're zoned out and can't think and can hardly move, some they chain to the walls so they can't attack or try to run…and others, like me, they leave you in your clothes for a while and for a few days or weeks you get the Oregon boot treatment instead, absolutely no way you're going to run with that."
"Do they do that with everyone?" Methos asked.
"Only the most resilient people are put in the boots," she said, "The others they just chain up somewhere, for the most part everybody just blindly staggers around in circles, there are no beds, everybody sleeps huddled in piles on the floor, looks like Jonestown, they don't always feed you either, and what they do feed you, it has bugs and maggots crawling through it. Sick."
"And who was the genius that tried playing doctor on you?" Kronos inquired.
"We don't know their names," she said, "With all the screaming and the noise, it's hard to hear when anybody talks."
"Well who's Grayson?" Methos asked.
"I don't know, I don't think the guy ever existed," Fagan answered.
Methos and Kronos looked at each other in exchanged confusion, and decided to move on. Kronos cleared his throat and said, "The incisions were still quite fresh when we found you, when did that happen?"
"Sometime before I left," Fagan answered as she poured a drink of whiskey, "No clocks, no windows, no daylight, no signs of outside life…I think two days maybe, who knows?"
"Was that the last straw?"
She laughed bitterly and said, "Well don't think everything leading up to it was tolerable, because it wasn't. But we didn't have any choice; I spent four months in that place, spent every day, every moment the guards weren't looking, trying to find a way out."
"Guards?"
"You don't think they'd leave the patients to just run around that place, do you?" Fagan asked, "Yeah, guards, or something, I don't know what you'd call them…they catch anyone who tried to escape or tried to attack the doctors and…I don't know what happened to them."
"Well what did they do with them?" Methos asked.
"The guards take them away somewhere and a lot of times you never see them again…I don't know where they go but they never come back."
"Well what did they do with the bodies?" Methos asked, "You know they killed these people?"
"Oh yeah," she said, "Oddly enough, one thing the place does not have, that's a crematorium."
"The bodies would pile up after a while, wouldn't they?"
"Oh yeah…not like Jonestown though," she said as she refilled her glass, "You know Jonestown, the bodies were piled up like a bunch of dirty laundry…this, I'm thinking more like Dachau."
"The death camp?"
"Er, no, the train cars there," Fagan answered, she looked to Kronos and said, "Remember the massacre there?"
"You do?" he inquired.
She shook her head, "That was before my time, but you remember."
"So where were the bodies?" Methos asked.
"All piled up," she said, gesturing with her hand, "Pile, pile, pile, practically to the ceiling with them."
"But where? Not all over the building?"
"Oh noooo," she said as she shook her head, "No, they don't want you to know when they're dead, they want to leave you guessing, wondering, wondering how long it takes, when somebody will be next, who will be next, how will they die…they pile them up where nobody goes and nobody can find them, but I found them."
Methos and Kronos had an idea they were getting close to the answer they wanted, Kronos suggested they get something stronger for their guest to drink. Methos' eyes seemed to light up with mischief and he disappeared out of the room momentarily and came back with a bottle of vodka. He poured her a glass and said, "So where do they put the bodies when they kill them?"
"Oh it's horrible," Fagan said, her words slurred by now, "The asylum is about seven stories tall, and on the third floor there's the shower room, and nobody goes there…" she shook her head again to emphasize her point, "Nobody goes there…that's why nobody there's bathed since they get there…"
"You mean to tell me in a building that size that's housing hundreds of patients, they only have one shower room?" Methos asked.
"Only one we know about," she answered, "And nobody goes there…they don't make us shower like they do in prison, everybody doesn't go, only one or two people go at a time, sometimes a few more than that, but never many…" she looked at Kronos through the corner of her eye and murmured, "Auschwitz," and chuckled humorlessly.
Kronos glanced over at Methos and then back at the girl and said, "You're trying to tell me that they used a gas chamber there?"
"All I know is anybody who got sent to the shower room never came back," Fagan said.
"I'm still having trouble getting this," Methos said, "There are hundreds of patients there, and how many doctors? How many guards? Not nearly enough that they'd be even."
"No," she said, "But how many guards in a prison? How many Nazis in the Holocaust? Nowhere near the number of their victims, the number of the prisoners…it's always been that way…but when you first come in, you're disoriented, you don't know what's going on or where you are, then they shoot you full of stuff so you have no idea what's going on, from there it's very easy to get control over the masses. Usually though, they only drug everybody once, and once seems to be enough because after that, they're too weak to do much, weak from hunger, lack of sleep, everything…"
They noticed now that their guest seemed about ready to nod off as well, but they wouldn't let her sleep, they kept her awake and kept hammering her with questions.
"Why did you come here?" Kronos asked.
"I didn't come here on purpose, I never knew this place was here, I was just trying to get as far away from that place as I could," she said, "I thought the road I took would get me back into town," she snorted, "Boy was I wrong."
"How did you get in?" Methos asked, "We had the house locked up."
"I'll say you did," she said, "I see this place, only house in the area, and I notice there are no lights on, and there are no cars parked anywhere or in the garage behind the house…so I figure there's nobody here, of course the doors are locked," she rolled her eyes, "Of course…and I broke the window in the backdoor and undid the lock there and got in."
"But why was the front door open then when we came here?" Methos asked.
"I opened it," she answered, "I had to cover all possible exits and make sure I could get out of here if I had to…that would've been pretty bad if the front door of the place couldn't be opened."
"And what, you climbed out of the upstairs window when we got here?" Methos asked.
"I was figuring a way to get up to the third floor from the outside," she answered, "I have a little experience in that."
"Climbing?"
"Yeah," she answered, "So I set up the rope on the side so I could climb up to the roof and stay up there undetected…I never saw you guys come up to the house, but when I did find that out…" she shook her head, "I didn't want to leave, where could I go in that storm? And how far could I possibly get? So I figured I'd stay on here for a while, at least until the rain stopped."
"And what, you'd just stay on the roof for all that time?" Methos asked.
"So it wasn't much of a plan, had you four idiots scratching your heads plenty long," Fagan told him.
"When did you get back into the house after that night?" Kronos asked.
"Sometime during the night, I climbed in through one of the windows downstairs and stayed there to dry out," she answered.
"What about the knife?" Methos asked, "That unusual knife you had with you when you came here…where did you get it from?"
"It's like what the doctors use on people, it's one of their operating tools, I took it with me incase I ran into any trouble," she explained.
"And what about the clothes?" Kronos asked.
"I got them from the rag pile that everybody's clothes had gone into, they hadn't been cut off because they were in already such bad shape, they served their purpose in I was able to get away without it being anymore awkward than it was," she told them.
That went on for about an hour, and every chance they had they practically poured more vodka down her throat to keep her talking to the point she wasn't even sure of what she was saying. Finally it seemed that she had told them almost everything, and despite their attempts to keep her awake, she laid down on the floor and fell asleep. Methos and Kronos lifted her up and laid her on the couch, and Methos probed for one more answer.
"Fagan."
"Hmmm?" she asked, more through her nose than out her mouth.
"Where is the Grayson Asylum?" he asked.
"It's over the water," she answered before she fell unconscious.
"Over the water, what the hell is that supposed to mean?" Kronos asked, "Half of Seacouver is on the water, over it, what…"
"Okay, calm down," Methos told him, "Let's consider this for a minute…we presume Grayson is in Seacouver…and she said it's miles away from civilization."
"Like what, the woods?"
"I'm thinking a higher altitude, up on a hill somewhere perhaps," Methos said, "That's over the water, isn't it?"
"How would you get there, though?" Kronos asked, "And what was that she said, nobody can find it by accident, that doesn't make any sense."
"I still think we're going to need her to take us there but I don't know how we're going to get her to do that," Methos told him.
Kronos didn't seem to hear him, he was looking around the room and gesturing with his hands like he was trying to pan it out, "Over the water, above the city…sounds more like a cliff than a hill…where're you going to find a cliff in Seacouver? That's the next question."
"Unless maybe she was too drunk to tell us right," Methos said.
"No," Kronos shook his head, "She started to become unintelligible but she wasn't incoherent, she was still very lucid, she knew what she was talking about."
Methos tried to think and he got an idea. He started rummaging through drawers until he found what he was looking for, a map of the general layout of the town.
"It's a couple of years old but we'll assume most of it is the same," Methos said as he pinned the map to the wall for a better look, "Now here's the civilization part of the town in the center, the charted territory, and this around it is as far as we know the uncharted territory, which would expand for several miles while staying in the vicinity. Now, she had to come from somewhere in here and make a wrong turn to wind up in our territory…" he made a mark on the map where Seacouver bordered the town next to it, "Somewhere in here, however we don't know how long she was on the run and for all we know she could've covered a lot of ground, even in her condition."
The two Horsemen were so engrossed in their discussion that they hadn't noticed Fagan getting up from the couch and quietly slipping up the stairs. Once there, she returned to Methos's room, and having no one around to watch or stop her, she started doing a little investigating of her own; she went through all of his things and jerked open all the drawers on the nightstand and the dresser and jerked out and discarded his belongings all over the room.