I raised my hands in front of me as I backed away from the door, further into the room. There wasn’t far to go. It was a small space, more of a closet than a room, really, but I needed as much distance as I could get from both the man with the bat, who I could only assume must be Andrew Cramer, and from his captives. Fortunately, they were both still chained to the wall, that would work to my advantage, here. Before he arrived, they had been friendly and compliant, but all that could quickly change. I cleared my throat.

“Look, this is all just a misunderstanding. No need to do anything hasty.”

“A misunderstanding? That you are in my house, in a locked room, in my basement?” he swung the bat idly back and forth as he spoke, just barely clearing Kate’s head next to him. Either he knew she would keep it down and out of his way, or he didn’t care. It could easily be both.

“I was looking for my friend. No one answered when I knocked.”

“I rarely answer to knocks from strangers in the middle of the night,” he snorted. “Apparently for good reason. But that doesn’t explain why you just broke in when no one answered.”

He studied my face, incredulity written on his features. I couldn’t really blame him. It wasn’t a good excuse, but Simon would have called in help by now. I just needed to buy enough time for them to show up.

“It was an emergency. I mean, just look at her,” I gestured vaguely towards Mia, still curled up in a tight ball on the mattress.

For a moment, he did look, a flash of reptile curiosity flickering across his face,

“What’s wrong with her?” he swung the bat again, taking another step towards me.

“She’s diabetic. She needs to go to a hospital. Just let me take her, and we’ll leave. I won’t trouble you ever again.”

The odds of that working were obviously slim, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

“I don’t think she wants to go,” he smiled, “Why would anyone want to leave this place?”

The itch at the back of my skull intensified and I watched as his eyes flickered, taking on an opalescent sheen in the dim light bleeding in from the doorway. It had been a while since I had last seen that; it was typically only rogues that did it. It usually meant that they were pressing very hard for control, or aggressively drawing energy, in a way most ubarae found distasteful.

“If you miss your friend, perhaps you would like to stay, as well?” his tone was honied, now.

I made a show of hesitating, letting my expression soften. He didn’t know who I was, obviously, and he didn’t suspect that I might be… resistant. Why would he? It was rare even before the Domini incident, afterwards there were few of us left. He took a step forward, the bat held on his shoulder, an incongruous smile on his face. I didn’t back away, just stared as if transfixed by him. Waiting. A baseball bat was a perfectly serviceable weapon, but it had several limitations. One was related to small spaces. As he took another step forward, he raised the bat and swung it at my head, I ducked at the last moment, and the weapon slammed into the drywall, sticking there. Cramer tried to yank it free, and in that moment of distraction, I tackled him, knocking us both to the ground. The bat came loose with him, but that was another of its limitations; now that I was this close, he couldn’t get any momentum behind a swing, so the danger was minimal. After a moment of struggle, him tapping me ineffectively on the arms and chest, I managed to knock it from his hand it skittered across the floor, out of reach. That was a good start, but this still wasn’t exactly an advantageous situation for me. Cramer clearly wasn’t much of a fighter, but he had a lot of weight on me, and he was fit enough, in a gym-bro kind of way. Were this a wrestling match, I would undoubtably lose handily. Fortunately, it wasn’t, because I knew several ways to hurt someone that would be decidedly against the rules in a fight like that. Cramer grabbed me trying to lift me off him. I waited until he was supporting most of my weight on his right shoulder, then I shifted to the side, throwing him off-balance and twisting the joint. As I did, I jammed my heels down into his shoulder, wrenching it outward, finally forcing it beyond its tolerance. He screamed and dropped me as his shoulder dislocated. I rolled as I hit the ground, glancing back at the doorway. Cramer was basically lying across it, blocking it from opening, so instead I looked back for the bat he had dropped. I spotted it by the wall, but as I reached for it, Cramer grabbed me from behind, hands on my shoulders, trying for my neck. I elbowed him in the throat, right in the hollow at the centre. He coughed, snarling angrily he shoved me down onto one of the mattresses lining the walls. I stumbled over a blanket and dropped to my knees. I was just trying to regain my feet, when I felt small, soft hands wrap around my neck, dragging me back down. I cursed; this was exactly what I had been trying to avoid. I looked up to see Lena’s face above me, but she wasn’t looking at me, her eyes were directed upward, filled with concern.

“Are you alright, Drew?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he snapped. “Just hold her there, ok sweetie?”

I was propped up against her, and both of her arms were wrapped tightly around my neck. She tightened her grip, following his instructions. I struggled for a moment, twisting in her grasp, but I couldn’t stand from this position, no leverage. I could shake her off, but she had a fanatic’s determination, I knew I would have to hurt her to do so. I hesitated and before I could decide how to best handle her, Cramer returned with the bat gripped in his left hand, he ran it up my stomach and brought it to rest on my chin, tipping my head up to face him.

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“Before I cave your skull in, how about you tell me who you are, and who sent you?”

“That offer doesn’t have much benefit to me, if you are going to cave in my skull either way, does it?”

“If you want benefits, keep in mind that I can make you tell me what I want to know, but that wouldn’t really in your best interest. Trust me.”

“I already told you; I came here for Mia. That’s all.”

“How did you find her here?”

“It wasn’t complicated. People saw you leave the bar with her.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

I almost laughed at that. He assumed if I wasn’t interested in him, I must be interested in women. How often people forgot that those weren’t the only options.

“Sure. Please, can I just take her and go?” I tried to look frightened. “Look, I don’t even know what’s going on here, I just want to get Mia somewhere safe. Please.”

“I can see we aren’t getting anywhere here,” he ignored me and instead began fishing through my pockets until he found my phone.

He held it up to my face until it unlocked, then Cramer began scrolling. It only took a moment for his expression to sour, fear and rage mingling on his features.

“You know Gail Tremblay?”

Fuck. I probably should have changed some of my contacts to pseudonyms, but in my defense, I was supposed to be retired. I turned my face away without answering. If he knew that name on sight, nothing I could say would make this any better. He pressed the bat into my cheek, turning my face back to him.

“You are one of them, then? Organization?”

I sighed, but still didn’t speak.

“Answer me!” he raised the bat up, menacing me with it.

I rolled my eyes,

“No one is Organization, anymore.”

“Did they send you here? To take my brides?” I wasn’t even sure he heard me.

“Your brides?”

“Yes. They love me. We belong together.”

“You have them chained in a basement.”

“To keep people like you from finding out about them. From taking them,” he trembled, furious. “Your kind drove me to this. Don’t you dare judge me, for what you made me do.”

“You have imprisoned these women. Someone was going to come for you eventually, surely you know that, right?”

“Why!? Why should anyone have any say in a relationship between consenting adults?”

“Consenting?” I laughed. “That what you call this? You took away their ability to consent. You forced your ‘love’ on them and then you locked them away so no one could stop you. Let’s not pretend this is anything but what it is.”

“Why does that matter? What makes you think you get to decide anything about love? If you are one of them, you don’t even know what it is,” he snorted. “You can’t possibly understand. All you need to know is that they are happy, and they want to be here. Don’t you, my loves?”

“Of course, no one will take us from your side,” Lena tightened her grip.

“I want to be anywhere you are, Drew,” Kate replied from across the room.

“Funny,” I coughed slightly, it was starting to get a bit hard to breathe. “I only heard two replies. Maybe the woman you have almost put into a coma would have something different to say, if only she were conscious enough to say it. Were you just planning to leave her down here to die? Is that love, to you?”

“I didn’t know she was so ill,” his eyes darted briefly across the room.

“Ok. Well, now that you do, will you get her medical attention?”

He hesitated for a moment,

“No, if we go to a hospital or call a doctor it will raise too many questions. There is nothing I can do for her, now. Mia would understand, she would agree.”

“She would agree to die down here?” I raised an eyebrow.

“Of course. What greater show of love is there? She would willingly die for us, to protect our family.”

“But you wouldn’t risk exposure, for her?”

He cocked his head to the side, confused,

“Why would I?”

I shook my head. Typical rogue. Love and adoration were owed to them, it wouldn’t even occur to them to give anything in return. Well, it could have been worse. He didn’t seem to be interested in torture, like Vicki Carter had been. This particular rogue didn’t seem to specifically enjoy pain or suffering, he seemed more interested in control and worship. Them chained down here, pinning for him, that was what he needed. Although, they had mentioned another girl.

“What happened to Ashley?” I asked.

“Ashley… went to visit a friend of mine. She’ll be back, eventually. I look forward to seeing how much she missed me, while we were apart.”

That raised a whole host of other concerns, but one thing at a time. I needed to change tack, here.

“Look, I admit it, I am Organization. Others are already on the way,” I tried reasoning with him. “Surely you can see that there isn’t going to be any ‘eventually’. Your cover here is blown. If you walk away now, you can be gone before my backup arrives,” I hoped that wasn’t true, but he didn’t need to know that. “Just leave the women here, they will only slow you down, and go.”

“You make a good argument,” Cramer shook his head. “But I don’t think it would be very smart of me to leave witnesses behind, do you? I’d have people like you hunting me for the rest of my life. No, I think I should clean house before I go. And when I start over in another town, I’ll remember to screen out the sickly girls,” he glanced at Mia, lip curled in disgust. “They are too much trouble.”

He raised the bat, taking a few practice swings with his left arm.

“This really isn’t necessary,” I protested, twisting in Lena’s grasp, her grip tightening, threatening to cut off my airway.

I couldn’t rise without breaking her arm, and at this point I doubted I had time for that, anyway. There was, as far as I could see, only one option left to me, and I wasn’t exactly looking forward to it. In preparation, I curled my legs up to my chest, grabbing my ankles, as close to the fetal position as I could manage, under the circumstances.

Looking down at me, curled up at his feet, Cramer laughed, but there was no humor in it.

“You made this necessary, my dear. You killed every person in this room,” he gestured towards each woman with the end of his bat. “If you had simply minded your own business, none of this ever had to happen. I hope you enjoy that, as your final thought.”

With that, he touched my head gently with the tip of the bat, marking his place, then he reared back, raising it above his head for a fatal blow. As he did, I pulled the gun from my ankle holster, and fired two shots into his chest.