There the dark hall rests, in it something cold. It's all alone along the floor and reeks of almond pure. This thing right here, from nowhere's everywhere, is just like you and me. She's a human being and she was taken from this life too soon. Lucrecia is gone and it doesn't look like anyone would ever find this hall any time soon. Her soft face rests against the dirty surface of the tile floor and those ugly yellow lights sway casting her shadow beneath her and above her. The rusty pipes along the ceiling drip down to her bluing skin.

There had been a massacre. Guzman, Polo, and Ander sit together on a stone wall draped in the cloak of grief. Never before had the pain felt this strong for never had they whitnessed death and all his friends at the same time. Mothers, sisters, and best friends all gone in one night. The smoking chamber of the gun fresh in all three of their minds. What they had to do to survive. Who they held as they took their last breath. It's morning now and the sirens are so loud as the vans of life arrive much too late to do any good.

It's awful. The questions, the inability to answer, the rolling by of gurneys into the bright lights inside caravans and the insistence on acknowledging each one. This isn't their job but you see Las Encinas has always been a breeding grounds for 's natural that the police department would suspect them but no. The monster who walked these halls was no one they know. Someone with the surgical skill to remove skin, heads, and even hearts. A person who speaks fourteen languages and hid his face behind a piece of cloth used in a district unfamiliar to this one. The evidence sets them free on this evening.

"Where are we going?" Asks Ander as he looks out the right window.

Guzman, in the center, responds, "To a facility. They'd never let us go home."

"I'll give my uncle a call in the morning. We shouldn't have to endure an orphanage at this point in our youth. We're nearly seniors, that's ridiculous." Says Polo.

Ander leans his face into the cool condensation of a winter's glass, "Which uncle."

"Carlos, the american one." Says Polo.

Guzman sighs, "Our future is in the hands of a former member of a boyband?"

"He's a cop now. A husband too. With a past that rests in the hands of our parents, as esteemed as they were, we should give it a chance." Polo insists.

Ander takes Guzman's hand, not out of fear or interest, but out of something else entirely. A desire to leave so strong it requires this much silence and this much contact.

Rain falls down around the taxi and the streetlights come on as a whole day has passed. Not one stop, no verbal contact with the driver as the glass window has been shut all this time, sleep lasted long and the grogginess lingered into the night. In the early hours of the new day Polo made the call.

"Uncle. It's me. There's been an incident. You're probably going to hear from some officials in a few days. It's bad. I'm with my friends Guzman and Ander. We will let you know more when we get to the destination. Tell uncle Kendall I said hey." Beep, it was an answering machine.

"Our schedules all ruined." Ander whimpers as he presses his back deeper into the cushion of the seat.

Guzman, who's sleep had been short as his glare remained long and arms crossed indifferently over his solid chest, chuckled, "Our schedule was ruined when that mother fucker shot Marina on the dance floor."

Polo, as wounded as he is, can only weep as he leans forward into the chair in front of him. Carla... Christian... how he loved them so. With him their spirits go and he will see their faces in everything.

Suddenly they're stopping. Where ever they are it's cold. Frost has taken up the window and darkness fractured into soft blues and shadow. Polo is frozen. He loves the cold when he's happy. When he's sad the cold consumes. There's a weight to the chill. Usually the warm fire, the smell of brandy, and the folklore make him feel illuminated. When the universe has beaten him like this he's going to surely fall in length with the pains and slip into the woeful delusions.

If his uncle is on a case, which is usually how it goes, hearing back from him will take a while. So, where ever they're at, he could fade away and wake up somewhere far away days from now. Turning to Guzman he chooses now to say, "Guzman I..."

Guzman's arms come unhooked from one another and he reaches around to both of Polo's arms, "I have you Polo. No matter what. I will ensure you are okay."

"Guys..." Says Ander, "There's someone out there talking to the driver."

Polo's freezing seems to slip away when Guzman leans back into him. There's a friction when Guzman's tight jeans run along the side of the dress pant Polo had been wearing. It's full of static. When polo places his hands on the sides of Guzman's torso Guzman looks back at him with wide eyes of worry and concern. It's almost as though Polo can assure Guzman with a furrow of a brow and the boys listen to the conversation just outside the door.

As Polo and Guzman listen in on the context of what, uncomfortably, seems like a transaction, Ander can't help but see faces in the condensation on the window. Oh Omar. Oh Nadia. They were his family. Gone so quickly, like a flake of ice scattered to melt into the wall of others. The door opens and snow flurries around the three of them.

Out into the cold they are forced to stand. Snow is up to their ankels. It powders the ground around them for miles, there's a wall before them and another to the right. A gentleman stands with their driver and two women dressed in a navy blue uniform stand with guns on either side of the gates entrance. What is this?