"All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you."  

- Joseph Campbell

Harry watched the man from the large window that separated the interrogation room from the observation wing. The man fidgeted, tapping his foot repeatedly on the floor, staring at nothing in particular though his eyes traveled throughout all corners of the bare cell that contained only a desk and two chairs.

He was a Caucasian man with plain features, dirty blonde hair in need of a trim and some attentive styling. His eyes seemed sunken, as if he hadn't slept for days. He had removed his jacket and Harry saw the wet spots in his underarms as he continually wiped his face with his handkerchief.

Malcolm handed him a file folder, glancing distastefully at the man in the other side of the mirror and left the room. Harry took a few minutes to peruse through the file though he already knew that somehow this man would prove to be one of the final pieces of the puzzle in the Nephthys affair.

The man's name was Montgomery Coultron, and he was a psychiatrist, the word 'was' being the operative term. He now worked as hypnotherapist, his psychiatric license revoked years earlier for improper relations with a patient that included the use of highly controversial hallucinogenic drugs in his treatments.

Harry would never have known about Montgomery had the man himself walked into a local police precinct that very morning begging for police protection, claiming that men were trying to kill him as they had succeeded in killing two of his colleagues already. His case would have been buried under more important cases had Montgomery not mentioned a word that the policeman who took his complaint was cognizant enough to include in his report.

Nephthys.

It was the name the officer had typed into his computer, triggering an alert to go off in Malcolm's computer that very morning.

And so here he was now, looking disheveled and barely having slept a wink for the last two nights. His shirt was rumpled and he bore the look of a haunted man as Harry finally walked and took the seat opposite him.

"Are you the man in charge?" He demanded and Harry noticed that the man was trembling.

"Yes, I am," Harry replied. "I understand that you need protection, Mr. Coultron. Who from?"

"From Mr. Jones and his men," Montgomery hissed. "Secret service."

Sweat had gathered on his brow and above his upper lip, and he wiped it with an already damp handkerchief. "Mr. Jones killed the two other doctors I was with that night, and now he's after me."

Because Montgomery had blabbered about the deaths even before he'd been sent into the interrogation room, it took Malcolm less than five minutes to confirm his story. "They were murdered," Montgomery insisted.

Both men had been killed under suspicious circumstances, the first one as a result of a home robbery that produced no suspects or leads, and the second man having been knifed outside a local bar just two nights earlier. There were no suspects there either.

It could have all been just a coincidence to Harry, but for the fact that all three men had been in the same room as Alexa the night she had been flown back from Russia. The three men had held her for three days under the orders of Jools Siviter.

What a coincidence it was then that with Lucas' very recent arrival, as well as Mikhael's appearance back in London that two out of the three men were now dead. And the body count hadn't stopped there.

For with Arkady dead from Harry's own hand, and Nathaniel shot dead by CO19 just two nights earlier, Harry couldn't help but see the pattern appearing as clear as day. It seemed that the final pieces of the puzzle had finally been revealed.

Everyone who had been involved with Nephthys were dropping like flies. Harry had assumed it was all because of Sugar Horse at first, but he had to concede that even that had probably been just fear on his own part, knowing now that he had been the one to afford Minerva the chance to steal the Sugar Horse names from his own home after that one moment of weakness when he ran into her at the hotel.

And if Mikhael were to be believed that Sugar Horse was safe because Alexa had deleted the names from the thumb drive before Arkady could get a hold of them, then Harry had to assume that Sugar Horse hadn't been the only reason that Alexa had been kidnapped nine years earlier.

The Russians had found the weakness in Nathaniel's armor in Minerva, turning her as an asset sometime during Nathaniel's term in the Ukraine. How difficult could it have been for the Russians to use Alexa to achieve their own aims? How long had Nathaniel been forced to work for the Russians?

Harry could only assume it was Nathaniel's involvement with the international nuclear program that made him such an enticing and powerful asset to the Russians in advancing their own nuclear plans. Using his own daughter as leverage would have given the Russians the ability to control the very decisions Nathaniel had to make as governor of the Commission of Nuclear Energy.

Only no one anticipated that a former MI6 officer would get involved, no matter how far he had already fallen from grace after being exposed as a traitor by his own superiors. And as Mikhael used Alexa as a pawn for his own agenda, Nephthys, designed to bring Jools Siviter down, Arkady and Jools used her to further their own.

But where did Montgomery Coultron fit into all this? Harry wondered.

"What do you know about Nephthys?" He asked and Montgomery's eyes widened but he did not answer. The man's lower lip only trembled even more. "You came to me for a reason, Mr. Coultron, and I doubt you would have mentioned Nephthys if you didn't think it would attract some attention. You took a huge risk doing that."

Montgomery nodded. "I have to admit that I did take a huge risk, and that risk paid off. You will protect me, yes?"

"It all depends on what you have to tell me, Mr. Coultron? After all, that name doesn't mean anything to me. So I need to elaborate. What is it exactly?"

Montgomery Coultron frowned. "You just said the name would attract attention. Surely you must know --"

"It's an unusual name to throw around at a police station. And you specifically said 'Operation Nephthys' so I gather that you must know something I don't, especially if you want me to offer you some protection," Harry said, tempering his patience. "So, are you ready to tell me about Nephthys, or should I assume that you are merely wasting my time by having me guess what is going on and I can have you escorted back onto the street?"

The man needed a drink of water before he could proceed and when he finally did, Harry found himself rooted to his chair for the next hour as he pried as much information as he could from the man. Harry would have wanted to have spent another hour with Mr. Coultron, no matter how despicable the man seemed for he made Harry's skin crawl with every word he spoke about what he and his colleagues had done, and what he himself had continued to do for the next nine years.

"You continued to see her the last nine years?" Harry asked incredulously. He'd had Alexa tailed so often, though not regularly, yet he'd missed it. "How often?"

"She was required to attend the sessions every month during the first seven years, and she was always escorted by two men who worked for the secret service the first year or so," Montgomery replied, wiping the sweat from his brow. "If she missed just one session, I had to write a letter to Family Services, detailing her abusive treatments towards her son, Liam."

Harry could feel the heat rising to his face. "And did these abusive treatments towards Liam really happen?"

Montgomery shook his head nervously, his eyes avoiding Harry's gaze. "No, not that I'm aware of. She was an excellent mother."

"Yet you wrote the letters. How many did you write?"

Montgomery paused. "You must understand, Mr. Pearce, I had no choice in all this. I had to do it."

Having Liam taken away from Alexa because of a claim that she was a danger to her child must have shattered Alexa's world again and again.  Yet Alexa had never told him any of this, Harry thought, though he knew all too well that he'd been too busy to even call her more than two times a year since taking over Section D.  The girl lived in constant fear for years.

"Six to the Family Courts," Montgomery replied tearfully, his voice breaking. "And two to the Psychiatric Board, recommending institutionalization."

Harry sat back down, suddenly weary and sick to his stomach. "Institutionalization?"

"I had to detail that she was a danger to herself and her child, and that she should be institutionalized," Montgomery replied and this time he was wiping the tears from his eyes. "Mr. Jones said that if I didn't do it, he'd destroy me. He'd drum up charges against me --"

"And was she ever institutionalized?" Harry asked, his voice cold as he glared at the man, not wanting to be in the same room with him for another minute, but he had to know.

Montgomery swallowed, gulping down the last of the water in the glass next to him. "Yes, that second year after her son was born, shortly after her father died. She was sent to Bethlem --"

"Bedlam," Harry whispered, horrified. "For how long?"

"Five days," Montgomery replied, his voice trembling. "I hate to say this, Mr. Pearce, but she went through hell over there and if I could do things over again --"

"And what about Liam?" Harry demanded. He did not care whether the man wanted to turn back time or not. What was done was done.

"Family Services assigned him to a foster family until she was released," Montgomery replied. "That took care of everything, at least, enough to satisfy Mr. Jones. She became compliant then, and our hypnosis sessions worked to alter her memory of what happened to her in Moscow. For if she didn't, she knew what was going to happen to her and to her son."

"And what did happen to her in Moscow? What was your version? Or shall I say, Mr. Jones' version of events?"

Montgomery blinked nervously. "The version she knows, the only one she remembers -unless she achieves her own breakthrough, especially since she's stopped coming after you sent Liam to boarding school - is that a man named Lubienko kidnapped her, raped her, tortured her repeatedly for six months, and almost killed her. The three of us, that is the other two psychologists, were able to wipe out any memory of another man, a certain Arkady Kachimov, and unless she was faking it during our tests, it seemed to work. She had no real recollection of the actual events."

Harry pulled out a photograph from his coat pocket and pushed it towards Montgomery. "Is this Mr. Jones?"

Montgomery's face turned pale and he suppressed a gag, covering his mouth with his handkerchief as he nodded. "That's him."

Harry took the photograph and returned into his jacket. He'd had enough.

"And what happens if she achieves this breakthrough, as you call it?" Harry asked as he rose from his chair. "What then will she remember?"

Montgomery Coultron looked at Harry, a hollowness in his eyes that did not betray the man's belief that before the end of that day, he'd be as dead as his two other colleagues. It was a prospect that, faced with Harry's look of contempt before him, made Montgomery realize that death was a much better prospect than living under the wrath of Harry Pearce.

"When that breakthrough happens, Mr. Pearce," Montgomery said slowly. "She'll remember everything."

>>><<<

Lucas found Gemini quite easily because he knew its exact address. For anyone else, Gemini was just another house in a residential street, one that stood by itself behind a tall wrought iron fence and gave an air of isolation were it not for its freshly painted exteriors and garish red-curtained windows.

He entered the establishment without any problems, speaking in Russian to the older lady in the front room who asked Lucas if he had a specific preference. Her name, she told Lucas as she cocked an eyebrow alluringly, was Tashia.

 “Beautiful, like you,” Lucas replied with a cocky smile.  

The woman laughed, her throaty voice sounding as if she were forty years older than she really was, turning her head to the side to blow out a stream of smoke.  “I like you, you know how to talk a woman and maybe even make love to them.  All my girls are beautiful in here.  I hand-pick them all myself.”

She then gave Lucas the rates for all the services, adding, “check out the four girls in the main room and come back and tell me who and what you’d like.  If none of them are to your liking, I have three more upstairs.”

Lucas walked into the main room, the music blaring as two girls danced and two more were deep in conversation with two men on the sofa. He kept on walking past them and into a darkened hallway leading to the stairway up to the second floor. He stopped.

There was no other entryway leading to the stairs, he thought, and no way for Alexa to have walked in here without the woman at the front to have taken notice. He backtracked and made his way back to the woman who was lighting another cigarette.

"You don't like my girls?" She asked, looking offended though Lucas highly doubted it.

"Your girls are beautiful, babushka," he said, smiling. "But I need to use the toilet first."

The woman pointed towards the back of the entryway, where Lucas could see part of a kitchen and beyond it a door. "You may have to wait awhile," she muttered. "Some other patron went back there to use it and he hasn't come out yet. If he's still here, tell him to get the hell out or I'm going to start charging a lavatory fee."

Lucas walked towards the back, quickening his pace as he cleared the kitchen with a few long strides. A sense of urgency overtook him and walking past the bathroom, its door wide open and the space empty, Lucas hurried down the stairs just across from a door that he assumed led to the alley.

That must have been the way that Alexa had come in, Lucas thought as he silently went down the stairs and found himself in a darkened corridor. The smell of mountain breeze, probably from the detergent, hung in the air.

The sound of the dryer filled the darkened corridor, drowning out the music upstairs except for the the beat of the percussion that seemed to vibrate through the foundations. He could tell that the laundry room was to his right, for the thumping of dryer emanated from there and right across from him, in the farthest end of the corridor, he saw a sliver of light beneath a closed door.

As Lucas approached, he heard the sound of muffled voices from the other side of the door. He pulled out his gun and drew closer. He heard a soft cry and his heart skipped a beat. Alexa, he thought, just as the sound of a slap silenced her cries, replaced by a series of gasps and grunts.

"They paid me a lot of money to take care of you, girl," the man's voice said. "If I wasn't such in a rush, I would have loved to sample the wares first but as it is, I also like to watch girls like you die."

Lucas kicked open the door and stared at the sight in front of him. Alexa was on the ground and straddling over her was a man he did not recognize, his massive hands around her neck, squeezing it. Her legs kicked violently below him and her fingers scratched at him, each movement slowing down as his hands continued to tighten around her neck.

"Get your filthy hands off her," Lucas yelled.

As the man turned his head to look at him, a look of annoyance at the interruption crossing his hard face, Lucas raised his gun and fired two times, hitting the man in the chest. The man dropped to the ground and Lucas ran towards Alexa, pulling her heaving body from beneath him as blood splashed over her face and she gasped for breath, coughing and retching violently.

Lucas bent down, cradling Alexa's face in his hands as she struggled to catch her breath, tears streaming down her face. "You have to start trusting me, Alex," he whispered as he found himself fighting back angry tears. "What do I have to do for you to do that?"

She continued to retch violently as Lucas held her in his arms, her body heaving against him. A red mark remained etched against her neck. Lucas glanced at her attacker on the floor, his body still against a growing pool of blood that had begun to spread beneath him.

Upstairs, the music had stopped playing and suddenly, screams filled the air.

"We have to go," Lucas said as he pulled Alexa up, supporting her as her knees gave way beneath her but she struggled to stay upright, grim determination on her face as they made their way to the stairs. Holding her with one arm and the gun in another, Lucas helped her up the stairs till she pulled away from him, nodding.

"I'm alright," she rasped and grabbing the railing, she pulled herself up and ran up the stairs behind him. Lucas held on to her hand as they took the last few steps to the top of the landing.

He turned to run towards the front entrance, as the two scantily clad women whom Lucas had seen earlier ran across the hallway towards Tashia's desk in the front foyer, screaming hysterically.

Alexa pulled Lucas back, pointing to the back door, trying to break free from his grasp but Lucas held her firmly. He was not letting go of her, he thought. Not this time.

As he allowed himself to follow her lead, two men suddenly appeared from the hallway, yelling at him with their guns drawn towards him. The room rang with the sound of gunfire as bullets erupted along the wall behind them, splintering the wood and sending jagged flinders about them.

Behind the men, Tashia shouted a series of profanities in Russian that Lucas had never heard before, and one of the men ducked as a lampshade and a telephone came flying from the front room, hitting the other man in the head.

"You will get me in trouble," she screamed at them, her language peppered with more profanities. "So bad for business!"

As Alexa fumbled to open the back door, Lucas pointed the gun at them and pulled the trigger.