But not like this. No... Never like this.

The trek to Antonia Solo's hideout -and that of her secret resistance group- had taken a great deal longer than Kuryakin had liked, but their small caravan had had to avoid numerous common checkpoints along the way as well as any THRUSH search parties that might be there -a mass murder at an official encampment couldn't stay undiscovered for long- and by the time that they had arrived at their destination, for Napoleon, the numbness of shock had given way to pain and renewed bleeding as hidden injuries had made themselves known.

Illya found himself thanking whatever sacred powers still existed in a cold world that among Antonia's number were several doctors -Napoleon would live. But whole? That was the question. In a sense, Napoleon's world, everything that he had taken comfort in *believed* in, had been destroyed, and then the final betrayal -to be violated at his hateful father's orders... How could a man remain emotionally unscathed by all that?

And then, there was the disgust that Illya himself felt -not at his  injured lover- but at himself, for after all the pain that Napoleon had gone through to protect him, the Russian couldn't help but mourn the likelihood that Napoleon might never want to touch or be touched by him again.

Kuryakin willed the partially melted ice within him to harden and close around his heart as he placed a chaste kiss on the dark, fevered brow before rising and heading towards the guarded room in the near distance.

He could not undo the past, but there was something he *could* do.

"So, they send his catamite to try his hand at interrogation?" Illya ignored the insulting sarcasm in Julian Solo's voice, silently studying the man who sat tethered to a heavy chair before him. The leader of THRUSH New York frowned in puzzlement at the non-response. "I *will* get out of here, Kuryakin -I'm far too valuable alive...to my people *and* yours." Still no response. "This is just a setback. This is-"

"Shut up."

At the quietly spoken words, the abashed elder Solo seemed struck dumb...and suddenly scared. There was something he seemed to remember...something about the small Russian he had not noticed before -and it frightened him to the core. "What do you want, rebel!" came Julian Solo's stammered demand. "Money? I can get that for you. Position? I can arrange-"

"What you offer, I do not want -what I *had*, you took." Illya's eyes narrowed. "I came to tell you a tale, THRUSH. Do you know of the concentration camp from which I escaped?"

"How can I be expected to-"

"*DO YOU*!"

Julian Solo shrank back in his chair. "Yes! Yes! Camp HX-GEN, a-"

"A facility for the exploration of human genetics; a place where they altered, mutated, and mated prisoners to hopefully produce offspring ideal for the purposes of THRUSH..." Illya's smile was glacial. "You didn't know the details? The guard of *my* section, the individual whose name I appropriated, did more than maintain security, he assisted by volunteering his semen in experiments whose singular purpose was to breed perfect assassins for THRUSH -emotionless, intellectual, *efficient* human killing machines who had no hearts that could be moved once they had acquired their targets. *Now* you
begin to remember, yes? A failed experiment as far as THRUSH concerns itself, but let me tell you a secret..."Julian Solo's eyes widened in open terror as Kuryakin leaned closer and whispered into his ear: "*I*...am their one success."

The last thing that Julian Solo saw was the sweeping glint of silver metal.

"What do you mean you let him in to interrogate the prisoner!" The two guards literally quaked before their leader's rage. Antonia Solo had laid low better men than them. But no-one had told them not to-   No-one has said that Kuryakin could not-   Antonia Solo pushed past her dumbfounded security personnel and stopped short, almost recoiling in revulsion. The monster was no more. Her father -Napoleon's father- the maker of their nightmares, was dead -his throat had been cut almost to the point of decapitation. There was a hole in the farmost wall...

...but there was no-one else in the room.

"Find Kuryakin!" But even as she bellowed the order, she knew that there was no point -her hideout had always had the potentially fatal flaw of having been designed to keep people from getting *in* not *out*. Antonia frowned as she picked up a smeared scrap of written-on note paper from the corpse's lap. "'Take care of Napoleon for me -for I will always love him. My mission now is to cut off THRUSH at the source.'"