"We're sure trying to but you ain't telling much. You go dragging us off all dramatic and shit without giving us a word why."

"We have to find your friend. If he catches her up there he'll..."

"H-Hell what?" Henry said, shaking from some bout of fear fused to his adrenaline.

"Yeah doc, I know she'll get in trouble for being up there and all but isn't this overreacting just a little bit?"

"That's not it. That other doctor ... he's my brother ... and he's ... not what I'd call stable."

"Tell me about it but..."

"Look, I can't stand here explaining now. We have to get up there!"

The doctor set his sights on yet another stairwell access. He rammed it as if to run straight through, doing so quite successfully. Before ascending he stopped to address the two bums.

"I'll need help. Come with me." He didn't wait for answers.

Henry and Rum remained still, alone in the corridor. Rum looked down at Henry.

"Someone must have spiked the water in this place."

"Something's wrong. I have to go see."

Like the doctor Henry didn't wait for an answer. He too vanished up the stairwell, forcing old Rum to follow in kind.

Dense snowfall hitting her eyes, Sierra blinked desperately to bring shape to the shrouded figure. He stopped approaching, choosing to remain still, staring. He too must have been blinded by the snowfall. Rather than risk the intruder slip past he seemed intent on blocking off the only exit.

"What are you doing up here?" the faceless man yelled against wind's howling.

Sierra silenced, backing away to further decrease any visibility he might have of her. Pressed against the parapet, she slid her hands along the top as if ready to leap over any moment.

"I can see you, you know," the man called again. "Brown coats don't mix so well with white, unlike my lab coat."

Sierra hesitated. Suddenly the promise of leaping over felt far more appealing.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to get angry," the voice said. "Come with me, I'll take you back down."

"I-I'm fine," she spoke in a wincing whisper.

"Careful there, you wouldn't want to trip over the edge."

Those crunching footsteps exploded into movement. They came until he could see her straight. He stopped when she could see him too.

Sierra could make out a man of tall stature, his long white lab coat alone dwarfed Sierra's full size. On his right eye there looked to be a sort of scar, a scratch mark Sierra could only guess to have been caused by a woman's nails. His head turned to acknowledge those disorderly reorganised crates.

"Have you been playing with our storage crates? That's hospital property you know."

"Yeah right!" Sierra blurted, quickly sealing her lips with hands.

"So you peeked. That's a shame. The sewer rat couldn't mind her own business, had to go rooting through someone else's boxes."

"You killed John's sister ... you caused all this. This is all your fault!"

"John? John ... John ... John. Doesn't ring a bell I'm afraid."

"Annette's brother."

"That one's equally forgettable."

The figure neared more on every word, until he stood within arms reach, staring down at her. There was no way around. There would be no escape.

"T-these pills ... my friend had these same pills. Did you give them to him? Why would you-"

"The reasons why won't matter to you, not for much long-"

Sierra took her cue. In one spurt she drove her knee into the doctor's groin, allowing the chance to worm round his hunching figure. She didn't get far before his recovery. He jump tackled her down. Despite her squirming, the wriggling, he still managed to keep hold of her foot in one great grip.

"You little slut!"

He stood up at once, still holding her foot and twisting her body so she wriggled upside down. He started his counter with snapping kicks, each one increasing intensity until evolving into hard smashing blows. Sierra could only hang in the air, dangling like a punch bag. She took the kicks until his cursing and damning became a hazed mumble in her ringing ears.

The doctor, trapped in all his furious ranting, failed to hear the roof access door open and slam shut. He only stopped the beating to acknowledge those stampeding footfalls booming toward him.

"Who's there?" he asked, still holding the girl.

Rum emerged from the haze like ghost on the moors. Body taut, fist tightened, legs tearing through snow, he yelled, "Get off her you freak!"

Without hesitating in his assault, Rum delivered that one previously held back smack to the doctor's face. He followed up with blows of twos and threes and odd double knees till the doctor let his upper body crumble. Only then did he release the girl.

When Sierra did crawl to the safety of Henry and doctor Adam, Rum stood fit and ready for a second bout. His foe on the other hand, raised a palm for surrender, one quickly read by his brother who eased Rum down.

"Please stop, I can talk to him."

"Talk to him? No brotherly chat's gonna calm this psycho down."

"No wait!" the fouled doctor cried. "I give up! Please, I was only trying to tell her how unsafe it is up here when she ... she attacked me."

Sierra didn't need to shout about his lies. Her body language told everything. Not that she could shout in her current state.

The blonde haired doctor approached his brother, hands held up in defensive neutrality. "Stop lying. I'm not letting you do this."

From his hunched down state the doctor nodded most knowingly, and from it pulled himself to full composure. "I didn't see you there, Adam, good brother."

"This isn't right."

"You brought them up here? You promised you wouldn't tell anyone."

"You promised you'd stop all this."

"I wanted to. She found my boxes. I couldn't help it. It's not my fault. If my trust in you meant anything, dealing with this girl would have been a whole lot easier. Now things will get messy."

"I don't want your trust. I won't let you do this anymore."

"You've let me do it long enough. Now some bums are going to change that?"

"It doesn't matter who they are."

"Really? I've killed more of their kind in the infirmary and you never bat an eye."

"That's not remotely ... You didn't mean..."

"Are you sure? I'm not."

The doctor named Adam took one step closer to his brother. "Say all you want. It stops tonight."

"We'll see."

"Are you going to fight off all four of us? Kill us all?"

From under his long lab coat, the doctor unveiled a small sledgehammer, and bashed it over his brother's face. He fell at once, unconscious. "You mean all three of you. Two technically, the girl will be sport."

Rum pushed Sierra into Henry. "Get her out of here!"

The old fool charged the doctor, laying two more punches, enough for the doctor to lose grip on the sledgehammer. Henry snatched it at once.

Rum looked at Henry. "What are you doing? Get out now! Get to the first floor! It's safe down there."

Henry took the hint. He carried Sierra, limping, through the roof access door. Before he could close it full, some not so positive grunts began emanating from old Rum.

"We can't let him fight alone!" Sierra cried.

Henry sealed the door behind. The grunts ceased.

It would happen once they dropped not three flights of stairs, when they heard that door rip open again. Heavy, loud charging footsteps banging on the metallic staircase suggested the wrong fighter won the fray.

In the rising panic, Henry dove into the first double doorway down the stairs. This access door separated the metallic roof access stairwell from the regular indoor tiled stairs. In this section of the hospital it was the only one granting a straight stair passage down to the first floor. He found himself hopelessly ricocheting back.

"This one's locked too!" he cried.

"We can't get downstairs?" Sierra replied, holding onto his arm.

"We'll have to go the long way down."

Henry grabbed the girl by the hand, both lifting and pulling her through the nearest floor access door. They hadn't intended on escaping through the top floor of the hospital but in this state saw little other choice.

Exploding through the only open door to the hallways, they found it empty, like all the others. No movement save the flickering glow of weary candles.

In pure desperation Henry ran to a ward door straight opposite the stairwell landing. Peeking through condensation covered window he could see inside to a long, packed hall like the one he stayed in before. All the patients inside appeared to be asleep, or unconscious. He saw no movement, not from the nurse who should have been in there, not from the patients too doped to respond.

"It's no good. Come on, we have to keep going."

Henry tugged Sierra by the arm in whatever direction he saw first. If he'd taken a second look into the darkness hidden from candlelight, he might have seen those electronically locked double doors blocking the way. Both Henry and Sierra skidded to a retreating halt, hastily trying to undo their steps. When they did turn round, that man was already there as though he'd been there all along. He stood completely still, staring at them from a thicket of darkness and flickering flame light.

"Come now, what's all this running for?"

"Get away from us!" Henry cried.

"I'm not really the bad guy here."

Henry craned his neck to see past the doctor. A person came limping down from behind, his husky build and gritted beard flickering on and off in candle light.

"You're evil!" Henry yelled.

"That's a very relative statement. I won't deny it, in your eyes I must seem bad, but then, so are they ... in mine of course."

"Who?"

"Women." The doctor paused. "I wasn't born this way. They did bad to me so I merely do the same to them. It used to be a task ... revenge. Now it's no longer about revenge. Now I merely derive pleasure from it. I can do it as much as I want because they deserve it, and it's fun to give bad people what they deserve, especially when the rest of the world is too infatuated with beauty and so called innocence to see it for themselves."

"You're mad! That's nothing but a mad man's excuse."

"I'm not a madman. Do you know the difference between all the real madmen and myself? I do what I've learned needs to be done. I do these things because of what life has thrust upon me. It is my right and a madman's flaw. The difference is ... I sleep well at night."

"I'll make you sleep!" Rum's voice bellowed from behind the doctor.

The old bum raised an elbow over the back of his head, stumbling the doctor into a spinning counter. He smacked Rum in kind before he knew what happened.

The old bum fell to the doctor's chest to clinch. He peeked his battered face under his opponent's arm to see Henry and Sierra. "You wanna take bets or something!? Run you thick bastards!"

Henry nodded, swerving passed with Sierra in hand. This time the girl didn't seem so reluctant to run away. Rather she cried Rum's name in worry, then vanished.

Rum held onto the doctor until the sound of their steps faded. He then loosened his hands, by no means under his own will. Before he knew, he'd been lifted sideways then tossed to the floor.

"Persistent cunt! You have no right to stop me! Just lay down and die already." Downward kicks began. "Worthless! You have no right to be alive! Worthless bum!"

Rum allowed the doctor to lift him up by the hair. Rum allowed the doctor to punch twice more.

"Maybe you're right," Rum uttered, mouth spilling with blood. "Maybe I'm just an old worthless bum whose fights aren't worth a damn. Maybe that's true. But..." Rum drove a spiking knee into the doctors genitals.

Resuming his place as champion Rum sent a knuckle over the back of the man's head. "Not bad for a worthless old tramp. Yeah, and I ain't no karate expert but I do know it's never a good idea to gloat in the middle of a-"

The doctor returned the favour, dropping the old tramp to his knees. A kick sent him down to his back. Many more followed for his face. The doctor even took time to lean down and punch the old fool in the head. When the beating ended Rum lay there, a pile of groaning rags leaking blood on white tiles.

Calmly enough, the doctor stood up, turning his back on Rum.