Thank you all so much for the reviews! I love hearing from you all, so don't be shy. It's been pretty hectic with midterms and such, but here's the next chapter. Hopefully, it makes more sense about why other people are at the asylum after episode four, but I had this one planned for a little while since I saw the previews, so enjoy!

/

"What do you mean there's someone here? You said we'd be in the clear!" Bree muttered anxiously, running her hand through her tangled hair.

"Clearly, I know that," Ed whispered back harshly, his lips flattening tightly in thought.

"So, what's the plan now?"

"We keep going," he concluded. She furrowed her brows and shot him a look. He raised his brows and shrugged. Bree narrowed her eyes at him a moment, then sighed.

"Alright, looks like we're just going to have to be extra sneaky. Where to?" she asked, scanning her eyes across the immediate surroundings. They were clear here at least.

"Follow me," Ed said simply, sliding between the rusted open gates. She followed briskly behind him.

"There should be a discrete entryway over here," Ed whispered. Bree nodded in the dim light as they shuffled from shadow to shadow. She felt as if they were in some cheesy spy movie, her heart pumping loudly as she tried to keep her breathing quiet. However, she couldn't deny it was quite exhilarating. She hardly knew Ed at all, yet she trusted him to be smart enough to navigate them safely. Bree just had to watch their backs. She drew her gun from her holster. It wasn't loaded yet, but she was ready to do so at a moment's notice. Ed gave her a cursory glance and frowned, but said nothing. He led them to a small metal door, its hinges rusted, but Ed jingled the handle and knelt down. Bree cocked her head curiously, watching as he picked the lock with ease, the door swung open with a slight creak.

The two of them slid inside and cracked the door behind them.

"According to the blueprints, the file storage offices should be this way," he muttered.

They made their way down the dark, abandoned hallway, and Bree couldn't help but to shiver.

"This place is creepy as hell," she whispered, more to herself than to Ed. He made an uneasy sound of acknowledgement, flicking on a flashlight from his oversized tan coat. He led her up a staircase and down another few winding hallways until he slowed to a stop.

"Here we arrrrrre…" he said, his smile catching shadows ominously in the dim reflected light of his flashlight, "hold this," he added, handing Bree the flashlight as he started at the lock to the office. The window had collected an absurd amount of dust, and she couldn't see a thing past it. There was no way she would have been able to find this place without Edward.

Ed rattled the door handle and it gave a muted click. He pushed it open with a loud protest of the door's hinges. Bree immediately breathed in a lung full of dust and couldn't help but cough, her hand shooting up to her mouth to silence herself. Ed shot back a pointed look, and she just blinked back with wide eyes. He simply raised his brows and put a single finger to his lips. She nodded silently, handing him back the flashlight. He turned back to the room, stepping over various discarded items, and approached a wall of files.

Bree turned her back to him, facing the door, her gun resting unloaded in her palm. Suddenly, a muted noise floated down the hallway. Footsteps.

"Ed, you might want to hurry up," she whispered, pulling the door so it was barely cracked open. She peered through the dusted glass, reaching into her pocket and loading her magazine with a soft click.

"I think I almost have what I need…" she heard him mutter from the wall of files. Her heart skipped a beat when she heard a different voice.

"Quick, turn the light off!" she said quietly, crouching down by the door frame. Ed obliged, freezing where he was.

"Man, this place really is a dump, It's a wonder Maroni is even bothering with it. It gives me the creeps."

The voices were close now, the clacking of nice shoes loud against the linoleum floors. Bree furrowed her brows in the darkness.

'Maroni?' She mouthed silently.

"Yeah well, orders are orders, and there's a good bit a territory to be had in these parts."

The men's footsteps passed by, and Bree waited till they could no longer be heard before she released the breath she hadn't known she was holding.

"Jesus Christ," she muttered, remaining hunched against the doorframe. She looked back to Edward as he flicked his flashlight back on. Edward clambered to his feet, several files clutched to his chest.

"We should go," he said simply, handing a few of the files to her.

"Agreed."

As they hurried back the way they came, Ed moved much faster than he had before. His long, lanky strides had Bree nearly running to keep up with him. Only one more patch of open space and they were home free. Ed now was a good ten strides in front of her, and she caught movement in the corner of her eye. Gasping, she ducked into the shadow of the gate wall, and looked up. Before she could call out to Ed, a gruff voice rang out.

"Hey! What are you doing here?" a shout came from the distance before her and Ed, gathering around the bright lamp that lit the pathway. Bree's breath hitched, and she saw Ed stiffen when from the unmistakable sound of firearms loading. He stared, frozen like a deer in the headlights.

Before she even could register what she was doing, Bree turned from the shadow, raising her glock and firing three rounds, hitting the only light source in the dark entryway, and evidently sending a bullet that skimmed one of the men. She sprinted toward Edward, mildly registering blind shots into the dark, and a yelp of pain from the man. She nearly knocked over Edward's frozen figure, snatching his hand and whispering.

"Run."

Immediately he snapped out of his trance, and they bee lined out the gates, sprinting and not stopping until they reached the car, parked behind a patch a bushes where they left it. They were silent for a moment, their breathing erratic and huffed. Bree looked up at Ed, who stared down at something with his eyebrows furrowed, and noticed he grew a little redder than he already was. She looked to where his attention was directed and noticed that she hadn't released his hand, and was grasping it quite tightly. She glanced at him as he cleared his throat and she let go his hand, their fingers brushing slightly as the contact disappeared.

"We should….get going," Ed said quickly, unlocking the door and clambering into the car. Bree clutched the files tightly to her chest, nodding as she hurried around the car and jumped in. He kicked it into reverse, and gunned it down the narrow path away from the dreaded Asylum. Bree's heart still hammered in her chest, and she couldn't help but to let out a nervous laugh.

Ed raised his brows, his eyes flickering between her and the dark road.

"What?"

Bree smiled, running a hand through her disheveled curls.

"We….we just did that."

She seemed to have no need to elaborate, as he just nodded, facing back forward as he swallowed hard.

"And I just saved your ass," she added with a chuckle, her hands trembling slightly as she dropped the magazine cartridge from her gun and holstered it.

"Yes….yes, it appears that we did…and you did. And guess what we have now?" he raised his brows challengingly, a grin surfacing on his features. Bree quirked her head and shot him a look of perplexity.

"If you have it, you want to share it. If you share it, you don't have it. What is it?" he quipped excitedly, but it was not exactly like the other times he had posed a riddle to her. There was an edge to it, a sort of dark underlying chill in his voice that put her slightly on edge. She suddenly resisted the urge to shiver as she glanced back out the window, feeling his dark eyes on her.

"A secret," she whispered, barely audible. He smiled.

/

That night Bree fell into the deepest sleep she had in years, and was positively dismayed at the prospect of having to get out of bed and go to the precinct. She rolled over with a groan, but couldn't help but to smile with a strange giddy excitement at going to work with such a new secret. Sure, breaking into private property wasn't strictly legal, but….something about it seemed so much more productive than the work she had to do all day. She and Ed had probably done more to help the case in one night than the entire police force in an entire week.

So, she got up, and hurried to GCPD.

By the time she got there, she peaked inside the forensics lab and spotted Edward hunched over a few papers.

"Ed!" she quipped, his head snapping up at the intrusion. After a moment, he smiled.

"I got it!"he said excitedly, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses as he scurried towards her. "So, I isolated the molecule and compared it to that of the records we found at Arkham," he began, beginning to walk past her desk and down the stairs. "Apparently, we have a match! A drug referred to as ATP, the exact knock out drug we were looking for. Up top," he said, holding up a hand. Bree gave him a wry grin and a small snort of a laugh, hitting his hand briskly.

"Score for team Mr. sassy science and glock girl," she laughed, "Now go tell them!" she added with a smile. His grin faded.

"Do you think now would be a good time to bring it up?"

"Just, do it!" Bree whispered, pushing him forward and he crept by the window, peeking inside to see the Detective Bullock and Gordon talking to Essen.

"What is it, Ed?" the Captain's voice called out rather monotone from the other side of the glass. Suddenly, he snapped out of his reverie and Bree saw him swallow hard before darting inside the office.

"Guess what I found," she heard him quip excitedly and she grinned to herself as she scurried back to her pathetic little desk.

She took the time to refill her mug of coffee, leaving it mostly black, but dumping an obscene amount of sugar in it. As she turned around she almost spilled coffee on Edward as he was walking back to the forensics lab. Bree furrowed her brows, grabbing a napkin from the coffee station and dabbing the spilt drops as she met his eyes.

"Hey! That was fast. How did it go?"

He paused briefly, making a small grimace that grew into a tight smile as he spun around, his hands clasped behind his back as he gave a small shrug.

"They're working from the information we found. Not much of a thank you, but it will do," he said with a sigh. Bree hit him on the shoulder.

"Hey!" he said as he flinched away. "What was that about?"

Bree gave a lopsided grin.

"You are the reason they're gonna crack this case!" she waived her arms, gesturing to the room. "Think about it. Without knowing what drug was in that kid's system they would have never gotten a solid lead."

"Yeah, well no one will ever know," he said quietly, his cheerful demeanor all but dissipating. "They're going to barge in to wherever they go, guns waving, the cavalry behind them, and they will have their names all over the papers," he pointed to the glass pointedly, an uneasy level of spite creeping into his voice. "No one will know what we had to do to get that information," Ed said dismissively. Bree shrugged.

"And you are very right," she began slowly, "but we will….and if that's all we get today, then there's always tomorrow," she shot back, her grin still plastered on her face. This was the sort of stuff she lived for; the exploring, the mystery, it was all she wanted the whole time. Of course she hadn't really expected it through a mediocre internship, but it was certainly a start. However, she realized just how much fun she had playing detective as her cheeks began to ache from smiling.

Edward folded his arms over his chest, looking downward as a smile spread across his lips and he chuckled into the collar of his long tan coat.

Suddenly, all the pieces seemed to fall seamlessly together. Bree pursed her lips slightly, trying to think how to word her next proposal.

"You know…it's pretty crazy, the sheer number of cases we get that go unsolved…"

"It is, isn't it?" he mused, letting the question ring in the silence. She meandered over to her desk, Ed trailing behind her.

"The department wouldn't even notice if a few of them were missing," she took a long sip of coffee.

"Oh?"

She shook her head, a small smirk playing on her lips.

"It would be a shame if a few of them were….misplaced," she said, her eyes meeting his as she slowly slid the case file towards him.

"That would be a shame…" His eyes flickered with something unrecognizable beneath his glasses, and a sly smile spread across his features as his fingertips grazed the edges of the case files.

"A shame indeed."