Hank woke five minutes before his alarm would have went off. He didn't waste a minute, he showered and was on the road fifteen minutes later with a self made coffee-to-go. He'd be in NYC at 8 am, the best time to meet with the storage guy. He'd call him thirty minutes before arriving there.

He ignored every single tempo-limit on his way to NYC, but it still wasn't fast enough for him. And if things weren't already bad enough, he was ordered to stop by two cops. Damn! He hit the wheel with his palm.

"I'm sorry, I know I was too fast. Can we make this quick?"

"Just get out of the car first, Sir and let me see you're papers."

He got out of the car, handing his license and the papers to the cop on his right. He looked at his watch. The policemen noticed his nervousness and nodded to each other. "Turn around, Dr. Lawson, legs spread, hands on your car."

"Do we really have to do that, now?" He sighed, but did as ordered.

They checked him for any kinds of weapons and the tension eased some after they found nothing on him. "Okay, Dr. Lawson, you're pretty anxious. Is there any particular reason, why you drove too fast?"

"No, look I've no time for..." One look at the two men told him that this answer was just so wrong and would cost him time he didn't have right now. "Yes, my brother has been kidnapped a couple of days ago and I might be able to find out more about his where-about. So, I'm on my way to NYC and find out, if I'm right. And after that I want to talk to Detective Pierce from the NYPD."

"What's your brothers name?"

"Evan."

"Okay, my partner is going to check this, Sir. It won't be long. But you know you were too fast, Dr. Lawson."

"Yes, I know. That's not a problem. I know the consequences, Officer."

The other policeman came back and gave Hank's papers back to their owner. "I guess, you can drive ahead, Sir, but don't speed. I also suggest that you talk to Detective Pierce first and let him take care of this case. It's his job."

Hank nodded, mumbled a short thank you and goodbye and was on the road again. He was relieved that everything went well, but the time he lost annoyed him. He knew they were right, but that didn't help him right now. I start to feel like Evan, there is always a but with him, seems I pick this habit up with him gone.

His date with the cops and the descent driving afterward cost him forty-five minutes. When he finally called the storage-owner, his tension increased again. It wouldn't be long now and he would hopefully find an answer to his question. Trying to avoid the inner need to speed up, he turned the radio on for some kind of distraction.

The nine-people-crowd sat together in one room. Emily sat next to Eddie, the third person in their inner circle on the floor in front of them and the six other men shared the two couches in the big room.

"Okay, dear friends. I suggest you write down your offers on the papers in front of you. Put them in the envelopes, sign them with your name and give them to Emily. We'll find out, who's the one with the highest offer and will let you know within the next 48 hours, if you're still in the game. The next group will make their offers and the winner of your little group will have a chance to make a new offer then. There will be three groups with yours. I guess the final decision will be made in less than an hour. Just take a last look on the screen, if you want to. It's up to you, but I'd say it's definitely worth some of you're money, isn't it? You know how hard it is to find good quality nowadays." Eddie threw a charming smile at the group in front of him.

If there was anyone of them thinking that the man must be crazy to offer them ...this... him... his own son, he didn't say it. But if there was anyone thinking this way, he probably wouldn't have been there in the first place.

Some of the men wrote down their offers without another look at the convulsing incoherent form of the young man in the basement. Others needed a few more minutes to watch in silence to make up their mind about the amount they were willing to pay. There was no doubt about the if, but there were doubts about the how much.

Not far above people were discussing his value like he was just some item and not a living human being. But to be perfectly honest, if he wouldn't have been so out of it and you could have really talked to him, he probably would have doubted that he was 'being'. He was existing, that's all. Living? Well, did his heart beat and was his brain still active? Yes, but there's much more to 'living' than your vitals.

The worst of all. Human? His face, his body, his surroundings were covered with his sickness, blood, urine, fecal, bile, drool and whatever things a body could produce. There was no way he could move to a clean place, because the room was small and there wasn't such a thing like a clean place left. And even if there would have been some space for him, it would have still been dirty with the dust and rotten mice.

The new drug was worse, one of the rare times that Emily hadn't lied. He had all those hallucinations and even more than before, they felt much more real and the seizures and uncontrolled movements of his limps, his head and his eyes made things worse. It was like his body reacted directly to the hallucinations. Evan was gladly far too drugged to be aware of it.

If his brother could have seen him now with his rolling eyes, his twitching legs and arms, rolling his body over the floor through all his body fluids and all the other things that were happening to him, he would have broken down. Hank wouldn't have been able to ever forget that scene again. Gladly, Hank wasn't there. No, it was actually fucking bad that his big brother wasn't there to stop any of those.

There were too many people, dead ones, but also Hank and his father and there was Emily. No, not Emily, a giant snake with many heads and baby snakes on her head with Emily's face. The snakes were hissing at him and he was able to see their scaring tongues and eyes. Eddie laughed at him, it was an evil laugh. Hank told him he wasn't better than Dad. No, worse. He said, he was like Dad. He didn't want to be like Eddie or Eddie's friends. They had hurt him so badly, when he had just been a little boy and they had been gone all those years now, but they were with him now.

He tried to kick everybody away from him, dead or alive. He closed his eyes to pretend they weren't there. But his eyelids seemed to be transparent all of a sudden and through closed eyes he could still see all the skulls and faces that surrounded him. His mother was there again. Laughing right beside his left ear. Telling him 'Mommy is gonna take care of you' while coughing her blood at him.

His legs and arms were fighting against people that weren't there, but were there. He wanted them to leave, all he wanted was for Henry to stay with him, but the Henry that was there now, was a mean and hateful big brother, not the loving and caring one he got so used to. In a world where he didn't even had his big brother to love him, he'd be lost and alone and unloved.

There was a last desperate attempt to get those monsters off of him. He got on his knees, then on his feet and tried to walk away, but his legs failed and he was down on his knees again in no time. Even his knees failed him, too, and he crawled away from the attackers. But they followed him, were hanging on him, laying on him, pulling on his limps in every direction. There was no other choice for him to get rid of them. His fingertips touched the wall first. Then his hands. He took a final breath and crashed his head over and over again at the concrete.

The men had just left and Eddie and their partner were outside talking. Emily prepared some new medications for their next journey. She looked at the laptop screen, when she walked by. She had almost left the room, when realization hit her and she stepped back to the scene in the basement.

She didn't waste any time. "The bastard is trying to kill himself!" She yelled at the men outside and ran downstairs to the basement. Evan was too strong for her in his drugged self-hurting state of mind. She had to wait for the two men.

They took him on his arms and legs and pulled him away from the wall. They put his left arm on his back and tied it to his right foot, the right arm on his left foot. His body was still convulsing like some last silent protest, then he went limp, finally unconscious, at a place where the monsters couldn't follow him. His hair, head and face were covered with fresh blood now.

Emily checked on him, he was alive, but they had to wait and see. She couldn't tell if there was any severe damages. They had turned on the light and there was a lot more of Evan's blood on the wall.

"Will he live, Emily?"

"Yeah, I guess, he will, Ed, but I can't say for how long. We need Hank's money and that's it. If he lives to make the deal with one of your friends that's great, if not, well, too sad we lose the money, but otherwise... we just get rid of him."

Hank didn't know anything about all of this, when he finally arrived at the storage place and stood in front of the open box. He was actually surprised that there wasn't much in it. It seemed like Evan had thrown away many things, when they had moved or did his little brother never had much? No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't remember. Another thing that made him feel guilty for being such a careless brother.

He had considered to call the police and tell them about the storage and the diaries and what Evan had said about it, but he was sure that he wouldn't have been able to look at the diaries himself as soon as the police had put them in one of their small evidence bags. He could call them once he knew more, but not yet.

It didn't take long to find the diaries. There was a huge box full of them. He got the box in his car and drove to a quiet place. What would be better than a library? He dared to smile, when he left the storage. His hopes were up again.