When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on. – Proverb from the American West

She was just…gone. – Nessa Santiago, describing her helplessness watching Briel tumble over the wall.

Briel could, with her outstretched arms, touch either side of the corridor whose stone steps led into an unfrequented section of the Abbaye. Though the sound of the main road outside hummed busily, in Briel's passage, silence cocooned her, and the noise of her feet shuffled loudly in her ears. Could everyone outside hear it as well? She knew better, but the concern still managed to worry her.

The gate behind her had a lock that some careless employee had haphazardly shut, failing to properly secure it. Before her, a massive wooden-plank door bore simply a latch which she raised to allow herself into a back corridor of the building. Darkness shrouded the high ceiling above her, but the narrow dimness of the passage pressed in on Briel as if cramped from above as well as the sides.

As the passage curve to her right, she sensed rather than saw the next massive door that barred her way; the darkness had grown opaque. Feeling along the rough wood, Briel's fingers met the cold metal of the latch, and she lifted it, opening the door into the cavernous main sanctuary of the Abbaye. The hollow echo of distant ado greeted Briel's ears from an adjacent room, but in this massive chamber silence reigned.

Gliding from immense stone pillar to immense stone pillar, Briel watched the main artery of the room for any sign of human presence. A scuffled step bounced several times around the unforgiving facets of the room, and Briel spun to discern the source of the sound. She could not even tell the direction.

Immediately, she slipped into one of the corridors that led on the public tour, hoping to encounter workers that she presumed now prepared the Abbaye for viewing. The echoes, however, had deceived her, and instead of murmuring voices, she encountered more dusty silence as she fled. She needed to stall another two hours before the doors to the Abbaye itself would open, and she could disappear in the crowd.

Before her, an inky stairway led down from the hallway into some unknown region below. Guarded, Briel tested each step as she placed her feet successively lower into the gloom. The last step rose to jar against her downward motion, and she could just discern the crumbling wood of a door.

Once again, her fingers found the metal latch, and she cringed at the soft clang of its opening.

Before she could perceive the nature of the room beyond, a vice closed unforgivingly upon her right arm and yanked her into an ancient crypt.

Immediately, Briel lashed toward her assailant with the left hand she had so carefully nursed before. The pain was instantaneous, but she risked the pain if she could escape the terror.

Though her fist encountered Liam's sinewy jaw, he did not release her nor even stumble. Some new mania seemed to have overtaken him, and Briel could not fathom its source. Instead, he grabbed her wrist as it swung past him and wrenched it in an excruciating arc behind her. She could not help the cry of pain.

Liam's laughter ricocheted around the crypt. Briel wondered that no one heard and came to investigate, but then she remembered how deceptively the sound echoed. Most hearers would write the sound off to the disorientation of echo.

“You should have given up a long time ago, Briel,” he finally spoke with the peevishness of an adolescent complaint. “Now you've made this personal, and that makes me mad.”

For a moment she did not answer, choosing rather to calculate her maneuvers for escape. He still held the injured arm behind her and had wrapped his other in front of her waist. Rather than fight him in his poised state, she opted to lull him with compliance until she could deliver a more potent resistance.

She opted to engage him verbally instead. “Are you a monster, Liam? Don't you realize that someone who furnishes a slave-trader is a monster?”

“I see things differently, Briel,” he countered, bringing his mouth so close to her ear that his breath burned her neck. “See, you're not really an innocent. You're a professional like me. This has all been just a game between us to see who's better. Clearly, I am.”

He pushed her forward under several soaring arches upheld by massive pillars. With her chest clutching in misery, Briel lamented the reality that one man's sick game had ruined her life just as she had realized that she wanted it. With no definite plan, what had she expected? Keep running forever?

“What do you plan to do with me? In less than two hours, this building will be overrun with tourists.”

“Oh, I can do a lot in two hours,” he leered in response.

At the words, Briel's despondency fled and her anger mounted, and gathering all her weight, she crashed her foot down onto his foot's bridge, following the blow immediately with a jab to his gut by her injured arm's elbow and a back fist to his nose.

Her arm was on fire, but she could handle pain. What she couldn’t handle was letting Liam live out his sick intentions. She kicked backward with her opposite foot. Liam lost his balance on the edge of a shallow meditation pool that filled the center of the crypt.

Instantly, she shot across the floor while Liam growled in irritation and extricated himself from the two feet of water. Briel worried idly that she had angered Liam even more. What worse fate would he decide for her if she looked to be winning the game?

Mounting a staircase, Briel leaped three steps at a time until she reached an expansive open door which spilled out into a long, narrow room. Hefty wooden tables stood in a line down the center of the room, but just like the hollow emptiness of the bus, this room echoed with the nothingness that had become her life.

How had she caused this? As the lofty pillars that stretched far overhead flew past her, the repeated theme of the last few days resounded with the cacophony of her footsteps. You are all alone, the footsteps berated her. Her mind flashed back to her passage beneath the corridor of trees by the river; there, too, the loneliness had mocked her.

Just before she lunged from the room, Liam commanded her in an icy voice, “Stop now, Briel, or you'll regret it.”

Ignoring him, she burst through another door and stumbled into a large courtyard. Surrounding the courtyard, stone passageways stood overhung by pointed arches and enclosed by thin pillars. Rather than stick to the walkways, Briel lurched through the pillars and struck across the grass in the open center, past the manifold shrubs of pink, thorny roses.

As she reached the row of pillars on the opposite side, a door lay before her, and to her delight, she noted several voices just on the other side of the exit. Her freedom beckoned her.

“If you want to protect Nick,” Liam offered loudly from across the courtyard, “you had best stop running. He and those precious Millers of yours will be in some pretty bad danger if you don't come play nice.”

On the word Nick, Briel had frozen in her tracks. “They have nothing to do with this,” she asserted, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. “This is between you and me.”

“True, but I think Henry has some new motivation to pay attention to Felicity Miller, since you went to visit her. His pocketbook would offer me some stiff cash to help him find her. And I don't imagine Nick will lie down quietly and let that happen. Imagine how miserable your lover will feel as he dies knowing he led Bill Henry to Felicity – and led me to you.”

Briel had paused and now hid behind a pillar, the door only a few feet behind her. Still, she could not run. Time had ceased its forward march and the stir of the wind against the flowers whispered hypnotically for her to stay.

Her heart beat madly inside her chest, and a sudden jagged pain assaulted her. The new agony did not emanate from any physical force, but from the memory. As if in a trance, Briel's lips felt the warmth of Nick's kiss as he dared to transgress her protective emotional barrier.

She hated herself for throwing that away, for not recognizing its value when she had it. Her penance, no matter the cost to herself, would be to save Nick. She only wished he would understand why. Regardless, she had to kill Liam or be killed by him.

Steeling herself, Briel spun to approach the harbinger of her defeat. If she had faced him uninjured, she would probably have matched him confidently, but with her arm not fully functional, she knew that her chances of survival reduced to infinitely small.

She had to fight because even a slight chance that she could hinder Liam would prove worth the cost if she failed. Resigned but determined, she turned to face her pursuer.

“I should have known you were too weak to fight me fairly,” Briel turned her petrified stance into a feline stalk around the pillared corridor, purposefully lingering in the shadows as she moved toward Liam. “You know, that was always your problem. You're so pathetic that when you stumble upon any real competition, you have to resort to juvenile tricks.”

Now that Briel had made her decision, a new iciness insulated her from the fear that had hounded her for days. Though she knew that her goading would incite Liam to greater violence, she also hoped that she could impel him to carelessness.

“Don't insult me, Briel. You're already in enough trouble. Besides, you're the weak one.” His voice bounced around the stone walls to Briel's ears. “I never pegged you for such a sentimental, surrendering yourself for some people you barely know.”

“You wouldn't understand, Liam.” No, he wouldn't understand. Beyond physical attraction, had he ever felt tenderness for any human? Briel had no doubt that he had not, as she had not before the moment she heard Nick's name from Liam's lips; never in her life had she been as afraid for herself as she now felt for Nick and the Millers.

“You've never known the strength of caring about someone else more than you care about yourself. It's truly empowering, believe it or not. I'm stronger than ever now, Liam.”

She could see his form blinking in and out of sight as she and he passed the converging pillars. Though the sky still shone dusky grey, the sun had completed its ascent above the horizon and now painted arch-shaped patterns through the open-air windows onto the ground. The beams shining through Liam's hair imbued him with a subtle glow.

“Some power,” he countered. “You've given up control, Briel. You're letting someone else determine your destiny. That's pathetic.” As he spoke, Liam rounded the final pillar that separated his corridor from hers. He stopped his forward progress, adopting a casual stance and smirking at Briel in disgust.

“Actually, Liam, it’s not.” She mirrored his nonchalance. “What's pathetic is dying with no one to mourn your death. What's pathetic is caring more about protecting yourself than about anyone else. You are pathetic, because when I bring you down,” she riveted her eyes on his, “no one will miss you.”

In typical fashion, Liam grinned widely at her challenge. As she had expected, none of her censures had affected him in the least. Briel could only hope that if she died, maybe Liam would consider his revenge complete and leave Nick and the Millers alone.

She had already buried one family, erected stone walls around them as enduring as the ones amidst which Briel now stood; and she had entombed her heart, laid it in a hollow crypt which almost no force could penetrate. Almost no force. Except the gentle persistence of the man who loved her despite herself.

For all these reasons, Briel must at least fight Liam and hopefully annihilate him. For Felicity. For Alex. For Noah. For little Nicholas. And of course, for Nick.

“So, does this mean you'll come quietly?” Liam barked in amusement. Sliding his left foot forward, he began a painstakingly slow progression toward Briel's motionless figure.

This time Briel laughed. “Do you really think I trust you, Liam? That I believe you would protect Nick or the Millers if I surrender? I would have to be ridiculously simple to expect you to keep your word. If I don't kill you, you'll find a way to destroy the people I love.”

“Ah, please. You said it yourself,” he inched closer as they talked until only a couple of feet stood between them. “They have nothing to do with this. It's between you and me.” With his last words, he closed the final gap, characteristically weaving his hand behind her head as if in affection.

He stared into her eyes, his sick desire arresting him for an instant as he imagined attaining his goal.

Briel stared back, challenge and fury and passion pouring from her – everything he had wanted her for. Not, though, in the way he had wanted them.

“There is no you and me,” she hissed.

Gripping her hair, he pulled her to him, attempting to force her to kiss him.

And Briel pounced.

Before he could control her, she plunged her knee into his gut and pounded his nose with her forehead. With her right hand, she grasped her hair closer to her head than Liam's hand and twisted her body away from him. Falling forward, she pounded her left leg behind her into his chest and tore herself away.

For one second, he stared at her in shock, several strands of her hair once again the only evidence that he had restrained her. She spun on him at once, turning toward him in a crouch, and prepared for whatever retaliation he decided. Knowing her prowess, however, Liam opted to regroup and copied her readied stance.

“You told me to bring it,” she accused petulantly.

“You didn't bring it, Briel. You lost it. You finally lost it.” His tone did not tease; he sounded truly angry. “I had hoped I was wrong, but you had to keep pushing, and you proved I was right. I hoped you would just let those pathetic people die; they are just material! But you are even more pathetic than they are.”

With his final word, Liam lurched forward and connected his right fist with the left side of Briel's jaw. Though surprised, Briel grabbed his outstretched arm as she stumbled backwards and, using his momentum against him, threw him past her to the ground beyond.

Immediately, Liam rolled to his feet, swinging his right leg to knock Briel's legs from under her. Without effort, she jumped to avoid him, utilizing his lower position to send a kick directly at his face. He fell to the ground again.

“You're going to regret doing that, Briel,” he threatened as he struggled to his feet.

“I’ll add it to my list.”

Unwilling to waste her advantage, Briel attacked, pummeling Liam as he rose with both fists in a barrage. He reached out to grab her, but she danced away from him, ducking as she spun out of reach. She had misjudged, however, and before she had finished her revolution, Liam had lunged at her, wrapping her up like a linebacker and landing with his full weight on top of her.

“Rraaagh!” Briel screamed in frustration. The advantage had belonged to her, and her miscalculation had reversed their fortunes.

“You are a serious bitch, Briel,” Liam hissed. “I can't believe I used to find you exciting. Now you just piss me off.”

Briel's breaths sped through her chest, rushing furiously through her bared teeth and her nose. With her eyes, she bore into his, infusing them with as much vitriol as she could manage. Still, she didn't speak.

“Everything would have stayed the same,” he whined, “if you hadn't been an idiot and fallen in love with that loser.” His own eyes flickered with rage.

“You think I would have stayed with you, Liam? It was only a matter of time before I found out that you were evil.” Briel's tone came out breathlessly both from her recent exertion and from the weight of Liam's body on her chest. Still, his words warmed something in her chest even as hope was choked out of her. …fallen in love…Had she?

Maybe Liam was right. Maybe the reason she had fought so hard to separate herself from Nick Alexander was that on some level, she loved him – or at least was beginning to. She couldn’t afford such vulnerability, not with her job, and she had known she was in great danger. Men had fallen for her before, but she had never felt any great urge to reciprocate. Not until Nick. Liam’s laughter ripped her out of her reverie, and she actually rolled her eyes at his juvenile sentiments.

“Hah. Evil. What is evil? Your evil is my good. I'm going to get a lot of satisfaction out of killing you. That's good.”

“So, it's killing me now, is it? What happened to all the money you wanted to make? Didn't Henry offer to pay you loads of money so he could make a ridiculous profit off of enslaving me?” Her tone seethed with sarcasm.

Liam finally returned to his characteristic grin, staring thoughtfully at the ground beneath her head. “No, Henry just wanted me to take care of the problem. He didn't want anyone to know that he is still running ProtoComm. You're a loose end. I was going to turn you in for a bigger payout – and for the sake of my pride. I'm just taking care of it a different way than I had originally planned.”

Shifting his weight, Liam grasped each of her arms with his own. She could not twist free, and the ache in her left arm had intensified. Liam seemed to notice her wince of pain as he grabbed the arm.

“Hah, that's right,” he gloated. “You're hurt! You were smart to hide it from me, Briel. I would have taken advantage of this weakness ages ago.”

In an attempt to turn her face down, Liam adjusted his hips off of her and pressed down her right shoulder while twisting her left arm behind her. In a final attempt to free herself, Briel tried to wrap her leg around his side and twist from under him. In trying, her foot rattled his head as she made contact with his right cheek. Furious, Liam twisted harder on her left arm until Briel heard a sickening snap. Her vision swam as she felt her mind slip under a wave of white, hot pain.

Not until Liam slapped her did she hear the scream that escaped from her lips. She could not understand why no one came to investigate, why no one found them, but she had no room in her mind to think outside the pain.

“I'm done,” Liam declared, and reaching onto his belt, he pulled out a regular pair of handcuffs, clicking her now-broken arm into one side. While she still reeled from the pain, he completed his intention of turning her over and then clicked the other cuff on her other hand. Though she struggled, her agony weakened the power of her response. She lay still a moment, trying to control the intensity of the ache.

“You've gone too far,” Liam stood to his feet, grasping Briel by the handcuffs and dragging her up as well. Her mind almost rejected consciousness in an attempt to escape the agony.

For several minutes, Briel had no cognizance of her location or condition, but she came to herself after Liam had pushed her out a door of the courtyard and onto a large open patio, four times the size of the courtyard itself. When she realized his trajectory, she planted her feet, refusing to mindlessly move as he directed. Her pain had suffused into a backdrop for her thoughts, able to be repressed.

When Liam tried to force her forward motion, Briel bent double, bucking backwards into his abdomen. Then she sprinted forward enough that she could turn to face him. He fell upon her at once, rearing back his arm and lowering it repeatedly onto Briel's face. Without her hands to protect her, Briel could not reject a single blow, and her consciousness swam into oblivion once again.

Briel finally had to give up all hope of escape. With her injuries, she could not trudge up enough enthusiasm for life to fight the pain that she now suffered. Her desire for rescue ached even more than her broken arm.

Too late, she understood Jase. After a month of questioning his character, Briel understood the desperation that could have compelled the great Jase Hamilton to call for help. Still, the difference stabbed through her with a nauseous distaste and even in the misery of her circumstances, this truth hurt more than the throbbing of her head or the shame of her capture and ultimate demise. Jase, even with all of his moral ambivalence, had proven more noble than Briel.

Jase Hamilton had called for aid in desperation to help another, to help Felicity; Briel's desperation stemmed from a desire for her own self-preservation. Truth be told, she had no one rightfully to regret, and no one would regret her destruction too deeply - she saw little tangible difference between herself and Liam on that front.

Nessa would shed tears at the loss of her friend, but they would pass quickly, dissolving into the riches of her own life. For his part, Jase would regret Nessa's sadness more than he would regret Briel's death.

Beyond that, Sara would move to the next operative on her list after a short communication to the rest of the team regarding Briel's passing. Devin and the other nerds she had spurned would shake their heads and mutter about the waste of a good life, and the Millers wouldn't find out for months, possibly years, some day when Nick finally hacked enough information to determine that Briel had disappeared.

To them, even her death would prove ephemeral, as fleeting and untouchable as she had presented herself while in their presence.

Even at death's door, she had to pry the realization from the darkest corner of her imagination. For her entire life, she had run away from any commitment out of fear of turning into a stereotype, a woman dependent on a man. Now she realized that it wasn’t about being a woman; it was about being a human.

Humans were not created to be alone. When she had sentenced herself to a lifetime of solitary confinement, she had sacrificed a good portion of her humanity. She had denied it. She had run from it. But Nick had managed a feat that no other person had ever accomplished. Nick had broken down Briel's defenses.

And she now thought there was a real chance that she loved Nick Alexander. Never in her life had she longed so intensely as she now longed to apologize to someone, to beg his forgiveness for so coldly accusing him, for shutting him out of her life.

In whatever way she had rejected Nick, he had gently pursued her, not out of the desperation of his own loneliness, but because he had genuinely liked her. He never encroached upon her independence, never asked her to change for him; he just refused to give up on her.

Completely broken, Briel now realized that Nick would never know. Her compulsion to control had ensured her dissatisfaction. She had thrown away her chance for salvation in exchange for ill-sought self-reliance.

On her knees, debilitated by the pain of her epiphany, Briel gasped, unable to form a coherent thought for several seconds. Liam's laughter fell as physical blows onto her already battered confidence. Now she faced someone whom she could not out-think, she could not out-fight, and she could not escape.

Her last words to Nick had been an accusation. She had physically shut down the computer before he could defend himself. Now that she wanted to take the words back, she would never have the chance.

Finally, through with his gloating, Liam's hand reached to grasp the cold metal of her restraints once again. A look of disgust mingling with a fiery determination on his face, and he began to drag Briel toward the precipice, not bothering to look behind him to watch the effect his actions had on Briel. Something inside of her recoiled, even in her desperate position, from conceding to death, and she began a negotiation for her release.

“Liam, you win,” Briel sought to stall him with flattery. “I admit. You're better than I am.”

Liam just smiled widely at her weak efforts. “It's a little late for that, Briel. You had your chance for that after the fire.”

He would offer no more opportunities.

She tried another tactic, “Think of all the money you're throwing away. Bill Henry will pay you several months’ salary for my capture.”

Liam did stop, but only to gaze at her in amusement and to laugh once again. “Do you think that all of this effort is worth even a year's salary? I always knew you were mentally unstable,” he scoffed, and turning back to face his destination, he began to drag her forward again.

Finally, completely desperate, Briel appealed to the only thing she had promised never to compromise, wondering as she said it if it wouldn't be better just to die. “You know I've always refused you, no matter how you've pushed,” she couldn't bring herself to offer him her body openly, hoping instead that Liam would understand the insinuation. “What's the harm now? Why not get some pleasure as a payoff for all your effort?” she used his words against him.

To both her relief and her dismay, he turned to smile at her, an eager and appreciative gaze in his knowing eye. “I can't say the idea isn't appealing. Desperation is sexy on you,” he began, yanking her to her feet and spinning her so that the precipice now rested only inches behind her.

Her lack of ability to observe her ultimate demise closed her throat with terror, the image of the sheer drop fixing itself before her overwrought imagination. Still, she forced herself to gaze into Liam's eyes, trying to portray all her vulnerability in her expression.

Just before Liam crushed his lips onto hers, an indistinct sight blurred into her field of vision - just an unexpected movement from the direction of the courtyard - that nearly turned her tears of pain into a cry of hope. She controlled herself, however, lest she betray her observation to Liam.

When he leaned toward her, Briel held her breath. What she had seen amazed her, terrified her, strengthened her. Though she tried to control her joy, a gasping sob escaped her lips. Liam seemed too focused on his prize to notice or to care, and so the shock must have hit him hard.

At the moment that Liam pressed his lips to Briel's, Jase Hamilton's fist smashed so hard into Liam's jaw that the jarring sent Briel staggering toward the stony wall that protected her from plummeting to her death.