When next she awoke, Harley's headache was gone and she was alone. Though she had no way of knowing it, thirty-six hours had passed since she'd first gone to Crane's office. She had slept through the worst of the after effects and had only the mildest recollection of the nightmare images that had plagued her dreams.

Gingerly, she opened her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable screaming pain of being hit by light, but no pain came. She breathed a sigh of relief and stared up at the bare bulb swinging from the ceiling, its pull chain creaking with each sway.

After a minute, Harley sat up carefully. The room didn't spin, miraculously, and her nausea seemed to have abated. Her mouth felt dry and the taste of vomit lingered. When she was sure she could stand up, she did so, and examined her surroundings.

The room she occupied appeared to be part of a warehouse, or maybe a storage unit of some kind. The walls were bare corrugated metal, like chrome, that winked and shone brightly as the swaying light hit its surface. There was a cot, which she'd been lying on and a bedside table next to it, upon which was a small bottle of mouthwash. Across the small room, there was a steel table covered with yellow legal pads with notes scribbled all over them and a mop and bucket. Harley picked up the mouthwash and rinsed with it gratefully, spitting into the bucket.

Besides the furniture, there wasn't much of anything else. There were, however, two doors in opposite corners of the room. Harley crossed to open the one nearest and found it led outside, where night had fallen. The area seemed rundown, from what little she could see in the dark, and looked like part of Gotham's industrial district. That wasn't any help. She went to the other door and opened it.

On the other side, Harley found a much larger room, full of all manner of curious objects. There was another steel table along the nearest wall to her left, this one populated with chemistry equipment of all sorts, some of which she recognized. A few feet away from it, more toward that center of the room, there stood a gurney, which had been bolted to the cement floor. Leather straps dangled from either side of the gurney bed, two each for hands and feet.

The wall on the right side of her was full of metal bookshelves—the kind that could quickly and easily be assembled or disassembled according to necessity—and all of them were full. Chemistry books, notebooks, binders labeled with mysterious designations and a number of psychology and criminology books were tucked safely into the shelves, neatly organized. Harley approached the bookshelf and looked at the titles. There was nothing that she would have considered unusual for Crane's library—he did teach a purely optional introductory course on criminal psychology once a semester—but the fact they were in a room with a device used for confinement gave her pause.

Directly opposite the door Harley had just stepped out of there stood a large vat with a "CAUTION: CORROSIVE!" sticker on it and beside that, a steel roll-up door took up half the wall. A chain with a padlock hung from one side of it, unlocked and forgotten.

"Professor Crane?" Harley called.

There was no answer.

Against every instinct for self preservation she had, Harley crossed to the steel door, pulled the chain away and bent down to grab the handle. She didn't know if she was strong enough to roll it up by herself, but presumably Crane could do it, and he wasn't that much bigger than her. He was certainly in worse shape than she was…

Clutching the handle, Harley pulled as hard as she could. The door rolled up easily for the first foot or so but then got stuck. She tugged a few times and it finally gave way, sliding up into the ceiling the rest of the way.

The room within was dark, but she could just make out a string hanging from above that was attached to another light bulb. She pulled it and, blinking in the sudden brightness, tried to process what she saw.

The room was divided by chain link fence into six smaller sections, each one about three by three feet. They looked almost like…cages.

"Miss Quinzel…"

Harley screamed like a ninny and spun on her heel. Professor Crane stood behind her with a bag of Chinese take-out in hand.

"Professor Crane!" Relieved that he hadn't abandoned her, she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him. "I thought—oh, you're okay!"

Crane dropped his bag and put his hands over hers, pulling them free of his neck. "That is quite enough, Miss Quinzel."

Harley stepped away from him reluctantly and pouted.

"Would you care to tell me why you were nosing around in here?"

"I was—" Harley derailed her own train of thought and decided to poke him in the chest. "Would you care to tell mewhy you brought me to a kennel? And what's with the autopsy table, huh? And the vat? Is it quicklime? Are you a serial killer?"

Crane snatched her hand, crushing the poking finger in a punishing grip. Harley immediately regretted having even considered poking him in the chest.

"The autopsy table is not mine, it was already here—I assume you noticed it is embedded in the concrete floor. I merely rent this place as a storage facility," he said, his voice low and threatening. "At one time, this building was used by one of the Gotham mob families to store and dispose of…inconvenient evidence. It serves that purpose no longer, I assure you, but it was the only place that is the correct size for my storage needs that I could afford with my meager salary."

"What about the cages?"

"I trust you have heard of dog fighting?"

"And the vat?"

"Empty."

It surprised her how quickly she was prepared to accept his explanation. Something bothered her, though. "If you had this place, why have we been working in your office the past two months?"

"I have only been renting it for a very short time," he replied. "And I assumed—and I do not think incorrectly—that after weeks of meeting in my office on campus, where you felt relatively safe, you would not be comfortable randomly coming hereto a site that was formerly used for the disposal of corpses and still houses paraphernalia for same."

Harley accepted this aspect of his explanation as well. She probably wouldn'thave come here willingly, or if she had, she would have freaked out and gone running off into the night to the nearest police station, ready to get him tossed in the clink with wild accusations of being a madman who wanted to skin her and wear her.

"I believe you," she said with a reassuring nod. She reached out and squeezed one of his hands between hers. "It's…kinda…nice. For a dungeon, I mean. A few throw pillows, maybe an area rug…"

"Miss Quinzel," he shook her off, "I do not care whether you believe me or not, nor did I bring you here to gain your approval or decorating advice. I brought you here to recover. Since you are walking around causing me endless grief, I presume you have managed to do that, in which case you are free to leave. You are feeling better, I trust?"

"I feel…" Harley looked at him hopefully, "…terrible."

He looked at her sternly, clearly not buying the lie. "Are you trying to prolong this?"

"Um. No?" "Miss Quinzel," Crane said stiffly, "You have been a better than adequate assistant and a decent guinea pig, but our business is concluded. You have no more scientific data to offer me. Frankly, you should be glad to be rid of me so that you may return to your life."

"Is…" Harley's brow furrowed. "Is that all this was? Business? Science?"

"What elsewould it be? Surely you didn't think I derived some sort of pleasure from putting you through hell with hallucinogenic drugs?"

"Well…no, but I thought—"

"Miss Quinzel—"

"Wouldja stop callin' me that?!" she exploded abruptly. The outburst surprised even her but she ran with it. "My name's Harley! H-A-R-L-E-Y!"

"It would be wildly inappropriate for me to address you by your first name."

"You've called me Harley before!"

"Once, as a means of comforting you under extraordinarily stressful circumstances. It was a mistake that I do not intend to repeat if—"

"Oh for—" Harley grabbed him by the lapels and smashed her lips to his. She kissed him with everything she had and then kissed him a little longer, just for good measure. She kissed him until she didn't have any breath left and had to pull back, gasping for air.

Her hands still tight around the fabric of his jacket, his face became stony. His expression was thunderous. It actually scared her. With jerky, twitching fingers, he pulled at her hands, crushing them in a grip so tight that his knuckles blanched. He forced her to relinquish her hold on him. A muscle in his jaw twitched.

"Miss. Quinzel." His voice was positively furious. "You will refrain from assaulting me in such a manner."

Harley couldn't tell if she was angry or hurt or what. "But I wan—"

"No. You do not," he ground out from between clenched teeth. "You are experiencing misattribution of arousal. You have been through several bouts of intense fear in my presence and your body has fooled you into thinking that the rush of hormones is directly connected to me. It is not. You do not love me, you do not want me, you probably do not even genuinely like me, for which I do not blame you as I am quite a disagreeable and unlikable man."

Harley stomped her foot, twisting her hands and trying to free them from his. "I wanted you beforethe experiments."

"That I very much doubt."

"Were ya blind?!" She screeched, her emotions becoming quite unstable and impossible to control. "Sexy librarian!"

He didn't seem to understand and no wonder. She wasn't being terribly coherent.

"I spent weekstryin' to get yer attention, ya dope! Whadja think I was doin', playin' dress-up for my health?!"

She could see it as comprehension dawned on him. "Those ridiculous costumes were meant for me?"

"Duh! Who'd ya think they were for?!"

"I assumed they were for one of the young men in class. One of the young men in any of your other classes. The University's sexy professor. I have no idea who that might be, but there always is one."

"Well, I got news fer ya, chum, this time the sexy professor is YOU."

"I am no such thing. You will cease this tantrum immediately and set aside any and all ridiculous romantic notions you have about me this instant."

"Or else what?"

"Or else I will disabuse you of such notions myself and in the most brutal manner possible."

"Ha!"

Crane drew himself up to his full height and loomed over her. "Miss Quinzel…"

Harley was breathing hard, glaring up at him, stubbornness and petulance written all over her face, with tears threatening to spill over.

"You are a child," he said cruelly. "A man such as myself has no need for someone like you."

"The experi—"

"You are not the first."

The words bounced around inside her head, over and over again. "But—"

"You are not the first assistant, or the first lab rat, or the first woman I have pulled from the abyss and held still while she sobbed out her terror," he hissed. "You are not special."

Tears splashed on the ground. The hurt just made her angrier.

"You are a silly, frivolous little girl who is so insecure in herself that any denial of attention is grounds for obsession," he continued ruthlessly. "Your interest in psychology is superficial, you are not serious about your studies and you do not thirst for knowledge. Even if you were the first to assist me, even if you were special in that way, I still would not want you. You have misinterpreted my actions after each trial as being evidence of softness, of affection for you. They are not."

Harley shook her head, trying to shake the words away. "I'm not any of those things! I'm not like that! You don't know anything!"

"I am a psychologist, Miss Quinzel," he said, putting a hand on either side of her face to keep it immobile, "I know everything. You give your whole self away in your wayward glances and the words you use and the men you date. I see you more clearly than I wager anyone else does."

"Stop—"

"You think me a game to play—a toy that will respond the way you want it to if only you could find the right button. That is all the feeling you have for me. If I ever stopped denying you, you would only grow bored, because what you feel is not affection, it is nothing more than a thirst for attention."

"Stop it!"

But he didn't stop. If anything, he grew even more vicious. "Any measure of emotion you have developed is a combination of desperation and vulnerability. You are infatuated. Freud called it transference, Miss Quinzel, and your little feelings are nothing more than textbook symptoms, which you might recognize if you paid attention in class instead of daydreaming about bedding your teacher—"

"STOP IT!"

She slapped him. Surprised, he staggered back, releasing her.

Harley ran.