Sorry for the delay. ive been in the middle of nowhere in a place called "The Land with no Internet" so for all those who've been waiting for this chapter ive made it extra long to make up for the delay, enjoy. X.B. Edgar

A fortnight passed.

Something rolled over in Evey stomach, she stared up hatefully at the pink reflection. It wasn't a mirror, they hadn't given her a mirror. In all truth she wouldn't have had the gall to ask for one, even if she'd had the energy. With the bandages gone, the moist warmth was replaced by a deadly cold. Even smothered by the hospital blankets she felt constantly enveloped by it. She rolled her head to look at the clock and found a stinging pain latch over her neck and spread like venom.

She wasn't anywhere close to healed yet, but just healthy enough to be unwrapped and left to freeze in the icebox they called a room. Her conscious mind had developed over the last two weeks to become more prominent, but she remained quite weak much of the time and still fell asleep regardless of the sun being up or down.

Her severed memory had not become focused in that time and to her dismay more of her recent memories (such as her first nights in hospital) left to join it in it's haze. Her eyes set on the alarm clock by the bed flashing its numbers proudly and brightly, straining her eyes.

5:04

5:04

5:05

It wouldn't be that long, Evey reassured herself, rolling her neck back onto the pillow. Not long at all. She shuddered as cool wind blew though the open window sizzling on her red swollen skin. The pink murky reflection caught her eye again and held it. What would he think? Well of coarse he wouldn't be hurt… would he? Was it selfish of her to think so?

"Ok so your George and I'm…?"

"Allan."

"Right, ALLEN!"

"Shu- Shut the fuck up!", Roger sneered drunkenly in a mock whisper. The two walked inexpertly down the block holding each other up, shoulder to shoulder. "Yeah, you're Allen… are?…weren't you Allen before?"

"Oooooooh…" he scrunched his face in concentration., then he gave up.

"I don't know…" The other drawled out. They came to a door step one Roger felt in his pocket for a key. The door swung open before he managed to find it.

"So where have you been?"

The finger man looked up into his sister's angry face, wrinkled with makeup that had obviously been smeared up one side of a pillow. She made out another shape in the dark. "And who's this?"

"I'm Allan! And this… this bloke is George!" he man known as 'this' bellowed before crumbling onto the step. Roger's sister automatically leaned forward to help him but her brother held her back, "Leave him. He's been nothing but a pain all night anyway." He tugged his sister by the arm into the door and closed it against his friend's bald head on the other side.

"What's all this about Allen?"

"It has… it was his old face-name," he slumped into a kitchen chair, "back in Inner-City. I was George."

"What, he's an ex-finger man too?" the woman was confused. She filled a glass with water and set it next to him, catching a glimpse of his face. "How much have you had to drink?"

"Not enough." She heaved a sigh and glanced at the clock. It was barely after ten. He would probably go out again. Soon, she hoped. Roger had only lived here a couple of weeks. (A couple of protesters had burned down his flat from what she knew.) But already she had adapted to his routine. Sleeping all day and drinking all night was all there was to it. That was what it was like when they were young as well. She didn't really give a shit anymore, as long as he didn't get mean… and as long as it was his money that he was wasting on beer.

But he'd never brought home another finger man before? He'd never had the taste for guys from work.

Roger wasn't a violent man perse. Of all the men in inner-city he was one of the easy goers. He'd pulled his weight in papers and he'd followed the rules as far as he knew them. But still there were files. Things he had done that he didn't really remember, now unearthed.

Unlike "Allan" or anyone else, Roger really felt sorry for what he did. And nobody believed him about it. Things he had done to women late at night when they needed a bit of punishment, things he wouldn't have done sober certainly, things his wife, Kelly, never would approved of had she known.

Then one morning there came box after box piled on management desks. Red boxes they called them, although he'd never seen one. Things got away, things got around. He came home one day to find there wasn't a home to come to. And there was Kelly, pretty as ever with a box of matches. The orange memory faded

"You going out again later?"

"What?"

"You going out again later? I mean you've got plenty in you."

"Yeah, I've got plenty in me." He cracked a weird sort of smile. "Where're the keys?"

"You've got 'em"

"'ight"

"I'm off to bed. I won't be up when you get home."

"Mmm."

The door slammed behind him. The woman heard his footsteps drown away and then reached for his half downed glass where he had been sitting. She put the rim to her nose.

"UrkK!"

Roger kicked a stone which skittered across the cobbles and landed in the gutter. The streets were finally bare, excluding the occasional folk who still took advantage of the new rules. Anarchy was settling in the city, if only enough that one could catch a view of the future through the smoke. Now that the Statues of oppression were torn down there was rebuilding to do. People couldn't live lawlessly forever.

Clip-clopping turned to crunching beneath him and Roger looked to his feet. The ashes of old parliament had long melted with the rain into a slushy soil. The rest of the remains had been torn down, a small crowd coming to cheer with every falling wall, over the last three weeks. Now all that remained was a huge empty space by the river pitted with old cleaned out cellars. He sighed. Walking on, the hospital loomed out at him. Unthinking he walked towards it.

Orderlies buzzed this way and that, wheeling huge cases of bottles and boxes, yelling for assistance, bickering, scribbling, stretching and sighing. It was not the hour for visitors, so why should there be any? Everyone he passed seemed to think so; ignoring him as if, because he shouldn't have been there, he wasn't.

He passed by room after room filled with grey florescent lights and sleeping patients the occasional doctor gave him a glance, assuming he was being escorted by someone else. There was enough on everyone's plate without him there it seemed. The fires had taken care of that.

He thought of Kelly.

Kelly. He passed through the hallway into the green stretch of rooms of the E.R. Something caught his eye. He turned. A splash of colour in the otherwise monochrome walkway. He scanned for it and found nothing. Roger sighed and kept walking. Kelly. Kelly was on his mind. The man stopped again and turned, deciding he was in need of something to occupy himself anyway, and walked back to the window where he had seen the colour. He found it. Reflected across the hall in the opposite room were a pair of feet coming out from behind a white curtain. Roger stood in the doorway.

There was something strange about them but he couldn't place it. He was drunk, or half drunk… this wasn't the time to be concentrating. He was getting a headache. Pink. That was it! The feet were pink.

"HEY!" He turned so fast his uncoordinated feet slipped out from under him. "Hey!" Said the nurse now running towards him to help him up. The finger man pushed her away and scrambled to his feet. "Are you admitted in here?" Roger struggled for words, trying to find something that didn't sound like "Sorry, I'm drunk and I have no reason to be here." but meant about the same thing. The silence lasted too long. He stayed silent. Instead he just walked past her out into the front hall and out the fire exit. The baffled nurse did nothing to stop him.

He needed to calm himself.

The rain had stopped, leaving the concrete out the door covered in slick mud, oil floated on top of it. Roger followed the oil to where the stream started, its tank had been beaten in with something. He took a breath to clear his head and strolled back and forth along the wall, stopping outside the door and fumbling in his pants pocket for a cigarette. Roger found a pouch of tobacco he barely remembered buying that morning. Out of his coat he pulled an old receipt and rolled the tobacco in it, stuffing a filter in one end and sealing the tube with spit. Pink feet. Pink feet? Someone had been in a fire. Kelly? His drunken mind became suddenly frantic. Oh God Kelly!

Roger turned and ran his hands over the door in search of a handle, finding nothing. It's a fucking fire exit. He had to get in, he had to be sure. But there could have been hundreds of burn victims, how could he be sure? This was stupid. He shouldn't have gone in there. The man's mind festered. Kelly. What if it was KELLY? The thought of her plump frame standing proud in front of his burning house, a smile stretched across her face. There had been so many people there that night, but he knew it was her. Her that did it. She had always hated him. And then there came an explosion in an upper story window and an air conditioner came crashing down in front of her.

And you didn't move! FUCK YOU! YOU DIDN"T DO ANYTHING! An ache swelled in his chest. That was her! It had to be!

"Kelly!" YOU FUCKING BITCH!" He kicked the emergency door repeatedly with both feet. "You tried to kill me!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, wondering if anyone could hear him. How did she find out? How the fuck did she know what he'd done?

Oh the things he had done.

His mind wandered back to one of his long nights alone. Out on the street looking for shapes, any movement. Waiting for victims. He never went to work sober. Not with the things you had to do on the job. It amazed him anyone could do it sober. He had gotten really drunk that night.

Some finger men, guys he'd never even met, he remembered them. He had wandered down an alley into a horde them. In their arms was a woman, she was screaming. The memory was old, he was old, so it faded in and out.

She was in a bathrobe.

He knew what he had done, regardless of the blurry facts. It wasn't the last time he had done it either. The others had given her a go, she was unconscious anyway.

Kelly had probably known for a long time.

He wished he was dead. She had tried to do him a favour.

Unthinking he threw his cigarette onto the ground and reached in his pocket for another. There came a Whoof as the oil slick caught alight. Roger hardly noticed.