Disclaimer:All of the characters are the property of Dick Wolf. I thank him, the writers, the directors and all the great actors who brought them "to life" for our benefit. Any "liberties" I have taken with them stems from my fond admiration (and a few personal quirks I will seek "help" for).

AN: This story is not set within the accepted "canon" for the characters as it is only officially portrayed by the TV series. So I get to "fool around" with them in ways in which they've never been seen, stretching that to the limit and suspending the "reality" that is "fiction" to start with…now there's a contradiction in terms!!!

(And yeah Goren I know the proper word for that is oxymoron...aaaah...you've been fooling around with a corpse in a dumpster again haven't you?)

The Silence Of The Camels

Eames waited impatiently as the guard fumbled with a ring as large as a soccer ball but only holding three keys. Each one was the size of a baseball bat and it took him at least two attempts to find the right one for each of the locks. The tumblers inside turned with a rusty and reluctant sound before he threw open the heavy door, which creaked on hinges not often used.

Inside was total darkness until he found a switch on the wall. A series of lights flickered lazily along the hallway offering dim and patchy illumination.

"He's at the end Detective but whatever you do keep to the right" the guard growled.

Eames felt an unceremonious shove in her lower back and she found herself inside. She could not stop herself from twitching slightly and shivering with nervous uncertainty as the door closed behind her. She was alone and who knew what manner of perverts and crazies lay between her and her destination. Cut off from the world and held behind the bars of their cages in this subterranean fortress.

Eames took a step forward on the rough cut stone floor that showed little evidence of wear from the passage of feet to and fro. She stuck close to the wall for her first few steps as her eyes adjusted to the semi darkness.

"Damn" she hissed as her cashmere sweater, a real bargain in the Macy's Spring Sale, snagged on one of the crudely hewn blocks of stone.

The sound echoed through the hallway like a shout and Eames really did yelp in fright as to her left, a huge and ghostly white figure threw itself against the bars of the first cell. With a strange plopping and squishy sound. It was automatic to turn and look.

Pressed against the bars was a gelatinous blob of humanity. Something like a cross between the Pilsbury Doughboy and the Michelin Man.

"Doughnuts" he moaned hoarsely.

At least Eames assumed it was a "he" by the tone of the voice. Though with those starkly pale and pendulous breasts, it might have been a "she". Vast rolls of fat cascading like a series of rapids to around the knees prevented her making any visual confirmation of gender based on the external genitals.

And all in all Eames was relieved by that as, revolted, she took a few rapid steps forward. The morbidly obese creature was left behind her moaning in an oddly erotic way about double cheeseburgers and buffalo wings.

Any contemplation on why they were called "buffalo wings" was cut short by something hitting the wall just in front of her face and peppering her sweater. It looked liked raisins dropping at her feet.

"Don't do that Marcel" whined a nasal male voice from the second cell.

Eames turned in time to see a Capuchin monkey leap from the bars onto the arm of a sofa. There were six inmates of the rather cosily furnished cell. Urban thirty somethings drinking coffee and doing very little. Unless you counted the amount of hair flicking and tossing two of the females were engaged in. Enough to give a regular woman a headrush.

"How you doing?" enquired another male voice.

Eames hurried along thinking the mystery of what happened to those people was solved and probably in the best way for the whole world. A fitting end when a series runs six seasons too many and there is no career worth speaking of afterwards.

She stepped over a pool of water on the floor. Forming where moisture was seeping through the walls. Though the smell as she passed by suggested not a underground spring, more a waste disposal or maybe a bathroom leak from above.

"Would ya like to meet Geoffrey?" enquired a voice to her left.

In the next cage a man was shaking all over, his eyes rolling as Eames glanced quickly at him.

Her uncertainty what to reply was resolved when he informed her he had other pink elephants in here she might like to get acquainted with. Getting too friendly with a buddy called "Jack Daniels" was clearly his problem as Eames reached the last cell with an inner sigh of relief.

Almost every square inch was filled with a maze of bookcases. Like a library there were even notices to tell you what the shelves contained. Eames noticed with mild disappointment there was no "romantic fiction", no "family sagas" and not even the odd "western", though her addiction to that type of fiction was a closely guarded secret not even Goren had managed to uncover. Her frustration at his failure to expose that or any part of her anatomy down the years was not so much a secret as the subject of water cooler gossip all over 1PP.

Instead, the volumes on the shelves were on the subjects of "poisons", "weapons" and "physiology". Eames noticed one whole section was devoted to "The Encyclopaedia of Esoteric Facts". That answered one riddle about her partner. Perhaps it also contained the answer to why he'd never made a move on her?

At that moment a door in the back wall of the cell opened and two guards wrestled a cart through the aperture. When it turned she noticed it had "Home Depot" on the side and the advice to parents not to allow their children to ride on it. Anyone foolish enough to let their offspring share moving space with a ton of dry walling or a heavy glass shower screen deserved to have the little brats crushed to death in her opinion. It would probably be a service to the future of the human gene pool.

But the custodians of the institution had ignored the warning as, strapped to the cart, was the shackled form of a familiar figure. Cable ties bound his hands, duct tape his ankles and his body was strapped to the contraption with the sort of chain link sold for fencing. It explained the "Home Depot" sign as they hoisted the cart into an upright position.

"Other way up guys" sighed the Promethean form as his head hit the cement floor none too gently.

Eames waited as they wrestled the cart through one eighty degrees and then left. The mask over his face was grotesque but Eames was sure she would never have voted for Nixon.

"Goren" she nodded as her partner wriggled a little within his restraints and Tricky Dicky's eye sockets fixed on her.

"Eames" he would have nodded but for the bindings.

"They feeding you okay?" she asked coming a little closer to the bars.

"I had liver and baked beans washed down with a nice coke" he replied.

"Diet?"

"Of course though..."

Goren broke off and sniffed the air hard three or four times.

"L'aire du Banalg" he said softly "You've been using Banalg Eames"

"No I have not" she lied having no intention of explaining what she got up to with Logan on stakeout two nights ago to have pulled so many muscles.

Some of them muscles in places only Goren would know that woman had them and whose unexpected discovery had so delighted Mike.

"So when can I get out of here?" Goren asked.

There was a plaintiff tone to his voice which, for a fraction of a second, had Eames feeling sorry for him. But her resolve was strong. This was for his own good in the long run.

"Soon as you quit smoking again Bobby" she snapped.

AN : There's something strangely familiar about this scene..I wish I could remember why...