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He'd stayed in the workhouse til he was twelve, when he'd overheard a group of older boys planning their escape and convinced them to let him come with them. They were going to run to the coast and stow away on ships bound for cities, where they could build lives of their own, instead of staying locked in poverty and destitution as they would here. Albert had never been anywhere but the workhouse and the little town he was born in, but he had no home anymore, and he hated the workhouse.

It wasn't the work, or the cold, or the lack of food he hated, that he was used to, but the continued lesson that he was nothing, that the world wanted him dead and it would be better if he was. Even the schoolteachers, who were the only ones to make any effort to improve these ragged, desperate children, between teaching them to read and write and pray, told them they were nothing but burdens, and should be thankful for the sparse care they got, for they wouldn't get it anywhere else.

The boys' plan sounded as good an opportunity as he was likely to get, and he was fast enough on his feet to keep up with them, so they let him come along.

The ship had been awful; hiding in the hold with the cargo, suffering terrible sickness, never daring to make a sound for fear of discovery, and being flung overboard. Some of the older boys had signed on with the navy, giving up on the idea of finding new homes when faced with the opportunity of work and pay right away, but Albert was too afraid to join them. The Navy meant going off to war, and he'd seen too many men crippled and scarred by that when he was in the workhouse, heard their stories of battles and the cruelty of their commanding officers, who sounded worse than the workhouse masters.

So he and an older boy named Doyle had stowed away on a ship bound for London, which sounded huge and exciting. It must be better than what they'd come from, right?

But a place was just a place, and Flight didn't listen to his 'good heart' or the memories of his mother anymore. He'd been told so often he was nothing, worthless, a sinner, that he believed it, and been led astray, further and further. Why should he care if he hurt others, when no-one had ever been kind to him?

But doubts nagged at him, guilt worn in so deep it could never come off, and that was what Shine had seen, when he'd first arrested him. A man he could make use of, and so Flight had continued to ignore his conscience as best he could, right up until the day he'd joined the police.

He'd never known men like the other policemen before, and from that point on, he worked as hard as he could to leave the man he'd been behind, forgotten. But Shine had made that impossible, deliberately making it harder for him to even try, knowing that he needed Flight to remember what he owed Shine.

And what now? Shine was a free man, and Flight was useless to everyone. Would they punish him for his crimes, the ones he admitted to and the ones Shine had, until now, made vanish? He could hang; it wouldn't take much, not with every police officer in H Division against him, not to mention Chief Inspector Abberline.

But as Shine had so triumphantly pointed out, to do so would be to risk the integrity of the entire Metropolitan Police, and it made Flight sick to his stomach to think how that could be true.

What was worse, much worse, was the fear that they would just hand him over to Shine, to do with as he pleased. Shine would surely kill him and it wouldn't be quick either. Would it be the garotte?

The thing he most feared was that they would just push him into the boxing ring and that Shine would beat him to death, in front of all the people he'd betrayed, from H Division, Bloomsbury, Limehouse: all of Shine's other men, who would see his weakness and fear as Shine took him down. He wouldn't stand a chance against Shine, he knew that. Few men would.

His aversion to violence had amused Shine, a man to whom brutality came as easily as breathing. Maybe he'd guessed where it stemmed from in Flight's childhood.

Had he really come all this way only to find himself in the same place? A frightened boy, awaiting another beating, too scared to fight back?

Flight tried to escape these thoughts, but they went around and around, and here in this cell, there was nothing to distract him. They'd even had to release the conman, Werner, so the other cells were empty.

Something good... His mind went automatically to Evelyn, though that brought another flinch of guilt. He'd done nothing but lie to her, use her as part of the investigation. Yet... she'd asked him to go with her. What if he had done so? Would it have been so different from when he'd left home, as a child? And what if she found out the truth about him, both truths, what then? His criminal past she might forgive, having spent most of her life around criminals of one sort or another. That she might understand, but his policing? She'd known he wasn't who he said he was, but had she even suspected what he'd really been doing? And the way she kissed him...

If he'd been himself in that situation, he would have thought her rather forward, brazen even, but as another man it was different, and Evelyn had managed to make it seem... right, rather than shameful. Bring in disguise had been liberating, in truth, allowing him to see things, people differently when he didn't have to be himself. But that was dangerous thinking. Not being himself, the man he should be, had put him on this wrong path in the first place, and for all his feelings for Evelyn, they were more for the idea of her, rather than the reality. If he followed her now, regardless of whether she would she accept him, it would all be in pursuit of a fantasy, one that could never turn out right.

Running away as a boy had been in the hope of bettering his life. To do so now would be cowardly, to try and escape all that he'd done instead of facing up to it.

And in truth, the decision wasn't his. Inspector Reid was the one who held Flight's future in his hands. Maybe he would gladly ship Flight off, to be rid of him.