The instinct to kill is a feeling like hunger. To Zaynab, hunger was reassurance that she was yet alive. To live another day and dream of another time. A secret purpose beneath all other secrets and purposes.

Controlling instinctive impulses is what separates the human from the animal. This is what the horrible little man before her had taught her. She had learned his lessons well and had survived in a world that kills all who walk on it. He'd told her that himself.

"What am I here to accomplish?" Zaynab asked simply.

"You will tell the truth or you will die." Shapiro shrugged. "But you are an honest woman, that is why you yet live."

"I never tell the truth." Zaynab said with a strange kind of seriousness.

"That's funny." Shapiro complimented her. He thought this paradoxical statement was some kind of sarcasm or humor and he smiled. It was an ugly smile.

"What is that tattoo?" She asked. Knowledge was a dangerous possession, but being here with this man meant she was already in terrible danger. Might as well double down, as she always did.

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you." Shapiro grinned, some of his golden teeth glittering.

"I see. Those are new. You didn't have one before. Halfdan didn't. Do I get one?" Zaynab refused to show him any fear. She wouldn't last long if she did.

"It's a key." He decided to tell her. "Now it is time for you to come along and answer all of my questions. If you are a good girl..." He started towards her and at this she stopped pretending to be amicable.

"You would have to kill me before I'd be a 'good girl' for you." Zaynab promised.

"I am surprised to hear you say that. I thought you liked me." Shapiro acted slightly wounded.

"Let us do the business we are meant to do. For the sake of A Golden Tomorrow." She lifted her chin against him and glared. Even the jaded worm before her felt a second of intimidation at her haughty stance before he frowned and shook off the effect of her gaze.

"Is there something you wouldn't do for them?" Shapiro spoke after a couple of seconds of silent thought. "You would die for the cause, right?"

"Are these the questions you have for me? Is this to be a waste of time?" Zaynab didn't know when to quit. A little voice inside her mind was screaming for her to stop provoking this hideous thing.

"Zaynab, as you know, I have always loved you. And I have asked for your hand in marriage." Shapiro lifted his eyebrows. He waited for her to reject orders, to make his job very easy. Either that or be very humiliated, either result would please him.

"I see." Zaynab gulped. She loathed this moment more than her memories of this man.

He was studying her eyes as she looked at him.

"Hate makes one weak. I am your weakness. Wouldn't that mean I am best suited to be your husband?" Shapiro sounded like his lust might overwhelm him. He was distracted and she wasn't exploiting the situation. He still had power over her and this is what she realized. He was right.

Zaynab nodded. "I will be as faithful as the sunrise."

"And see? You can be a good girl without dying over it." Shapiro grinned in triumph.

"Until the day you die!" She thought loudly.

"Come along." Shapiro gestured to a path. She followed it and he followed her. All the while she expected a needle in her back, something she'd seen him do. There was the metal door that led to an underground facility.

Zaynab stood there while he opened the door for her, after he entered a four-digit code on the keypad. Long stairs led underground. The place was mostly deserted. Here and there she saw staff, hydroponic gardens, a lab of some kind and some empty holding cells.

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"I expect better accommodations would be mine, as yours." Zaynab muttered without clarity. He heard her anyway and said:

"First thing's first. Business before pleasure." Shapiro pointed to the entrance of an operating room or rather a torture cell.

"Go on in. Me and my assistant will be in shortly." Shapiro left her there in the flickering light.

Zaynab just stood there examining the brown stains and hearing the echoes of ghosts screaming in agony. There was a chair that many had died bad deaths sitting in. The straps looked like they were unbeatable.

Then it was her and them and the room felt like a corner of Hell. Shapiro's assistant 'warmed' her up by slapping her and punching her in the stomach. When she doubled over he put his hands on her shoulder and rammed his knee into her face. She landed perfectly on the chair, stunned. They strapped her in and shot her up with sodium pentothal.

"Are you gonna be my wife, someday?" Shapiro asked. She refused to answer. He left her there alone with his assistant. The scarred mutant stood in one corner touching himself and watching her as she tried to resist the drug.

When Shapiro returned he found she was smiling weirdly. "Seems to be working."

"I am very high." She admitted with her speech slurred.

"Oh good. Then let's get this interview done so we can get on to the fun stuff." Shapiro put on reading glasses and held a tablet.

"There is a rat in the corner." She said with fascination.

"That's just Grunt. He doesn't talk, but that's not why he isn't a rat." Shapiro introduced his assistant.

Zaynab spit out some blood and smiled with her head turned sideways. "I mean the rat. It's got something."

"Stay on task, please. First question: did you release a CIA agent from Al Abna when you were with Abna Alnahr?" Shapiro asked.

"Nem faealt." She confessed.

"In English. I don't understand that nonsense." Shapiro frowned. He shrugged when she said nothing. "Moving on. You went to America and had contact with both the CIA and Jeffried Cron. Did you inform the CIA about Jeffried Cron's suppliers?"

"Laqad 'akhbarathum." She batted her eyelashes as she said this.

"Really? I am getting nothing." Shapiro looked at Grunt and the monster shrugged back.

"I did all those things." Zaynab tried to speak English and found it very difficult. They thought she had denied it. It sounded like she had said: "I didn't sings."

"Okay, good enough for me." Shapiro nodded. "Last question: did you try to lead Interpol to evidence that would compromise the reputation of AGT? I didn't write these questions."

"I shot him. He's dead." Zaynab slurred her English as she decided they were asking about the man from London. Then she added: "Ruined my dress."

"I am sorry, my darling Little Flower, for the roughness. We went easy on you. I didn't doubt you. Just doing my job." Shapiro said this and then he sent his report to those concerned and handed his assistant the tablet and went over to her. He lifted her chin with a finger, delicately. Her eyes shot back and forth.

In her mind she was reliving her worst memory. She was struggling now and breathing excitedly. She was nearly hysterical in her effort to escape him.

"So I have a question. Will you be my wife? I know you say 'yes', just want to hear it properly." Shapiro had a combination of sentiment and cruelty, unique to him. "Be my wife?"

"I can't. It won't happen." She sat up slightly, the drug's effect already beginning to decrease.

"How's that?" Shapiro frowned. He leaned towards her, intent on kissing her on the lips while she was still bound.

"You will die." She smiled and nodded and then pursed her lips for him.

"Wait, why? Are you going to kill me?" Shapiro leaned back slightly.

"I'm going to kill yee." She agreed.

"How? You're drugged and tied down." Shapiro leaned forward to complete the kiss.

"I'm loose." She giggled and suddenly drove her free hand upward into the space between his chin and neck. Her fingers were stiff and held together in a point and the strike drove her fingertips through the skin and behind the back of his jawbone. Making a choking noise and with blood spraying out of his neck in a mist he staggered back.

Zaynab struggled to free her other hand with her bloodied fingertips. Grunt went to Shapiro who choked on the words:

"Kill her, kill her!" As he fled the room bleeding and gasping for air.

Zaynab had her feet free as Grunt took two mighty steps to her. He gripped her by the throat and threw her to the ground, knocking the wind out of her. He'd dropped the tablet and she picked it up and shielded her face as his fist came to finish her off. Instead he wore the tablet like a bracelet. He made a weird hissing noise in pain and she twisted the broken tablet back and forth like a steering wheel. His wrist was open and blood was suddenly everywhere. Zaynab flung herself on him and he staggered back and slipped on his own blood. His head hit the arm of the chair as he fell and his neck was broken in the fall.

Zaynab took the gun he was wearing and stepped over his body, smelling his last breath as he exhaled. Out in the hall, one of the staff went running out and she let him have the first bullet.

Systematically she went along and shot dead everyone she found. Finally she had her prey cornered.

"You-you're going to kill me?" Shapiro whimpered.

"Of course I am going to kill you." Zaynab sounded disappointed. She watched a dark stain form on his pants. She sighed in disgust and aimed the weapon. It clicked empty.

"Okay!" Shapiro suddenly tried to run at her. She threw the gun, spinning through the air and it hit him on the left side of his forehead, leaving a sickening indentation. He stopped, twitched violently and laughed hysterically and then fell over dead.

"I killed you." Zaynab confessed and then she went to find her way out of his dungeon. She muttered absently to him as she went up the stairs: "You started it."