Searching...

[Deleted]

The thought always came back to him, again and again. Every night Kida Masaomi would return to his empty apartment, click the cheap flickering lights on, and lay back to think:

“What are they doing?”

It was not so long ago that he had begun to actually return to his bed before the daylight hours. In the past, he barely used his apartment. It was just a place for the three to four hours of sleep he could catch between his life during the day and his activity at night. Back then, it was almost as if those four hours were what separated Kida Masaomi the student from Kida Masaomi the general. He would awaken before the sun even began to set, shower, and head off into the streets he now did anything to avoid.

Now he spent all his time in bed, staring up at the ceiling, his normally expressive face passive and blank. Truthfully, he was bored, but boredom was safe. Boredom never threatened to physically injure anyone. Decisions did that, and although Kida had made the decision to stay free from the color gangs, he could not hide the fact that he missed them. The yellow scarves were a part of him, like a family, and although that family had been intruded upon, time had passed. He could not help but wonder if it was possible for him to return.

Nonchalantly, the boy gazed over to his digital alarm clock beside his bed. Just as his eyes scanned it, the bright green letters flashed from 11:59 to 12:00. It was a new day. A Saturday too. Kida had the choice of either staying in his apartment, or hanging out with his friend Mikado. Both were choices of the daylight Kida. Although he loved his friends, the options were not enough for a boy that craved danger. Somewhere in his body there was a desperate ache for the adrenaline rush that could only come from fighting. In his conscious, his desire and his guilt would have their own color war, but desire always came out victorious, because even his guilt knew he was addicted to night life. Like so many others in the city. Normal life could never be enough for the citizens of Ikebukuro.

Resigned, Kida Masaomi came to his feet. He put on his slippers beside the bed and wandered across the apartment’s cheap rug to his closet. In an almost automatic motion he slid the doors back, and there, right were he left it folded on a hanger, was his scarf. To anyone else, a scarf may be an accessory, a thing to fold up into a drawer and forget about until their faces are bitten by winter’s frost: but to Kida, the yellow scarf was an identity. Slowly, he reached into the interior of the closet and wrapped his fingers around the cloth. It was the same, of course, as the one he remembered. This was the fabric he had worn when his gang first started in middle school, the fabric his enemies would see fading away as the scarves beat them to the ground….it was the fabric he had cried into, helpless and afraid.


Today was a new day, and as the boy grabbed the yellow symbol of himself out of the closet, he was resolved to be a new person.

A person who could live in both worlds.

Kida felt that he had learned his lesson. Never again would he be fooled. He was older now…wiser. It was too hard for him to sit and wait and let the city move on without him. It would leave him in the dust. Forget his name entirely.

As he returned his scarf to his neck, all caution and hesitation disappeared like tears into a plane of yellow.

Either without thinking, or thinking far too hard, Kida locked the door to his apartment and wandered out into the streets of Ikebukuro. He did not mean to wander far, as he still knew better than to trust the city in the early morning hours. It was only then that the most dangerous people could roam freely, without having to participate in a crowd. However, as Kida continued to walk, he never looked back. He failed to read the signs on the buildings as he passed them, which would have told him that he had wandered far from his territory. Kida was obsessed. He was searching for someone…for anyone that would recognize him. It didn’t matter what came afterwards, he just felt the need to be re-affirmed as himself. It didn’t cross him twice that being recognized could lead to something horrible. To Kida, there was only the moment.

Searchin g

[UndergroundGod]

It turned out that going underground hadn’t been nearly as eventful as Izaya had anticipated. Six months ago, he had tucked Celty’s head away for safe keeping and left Ikebukuro with no real destination in mind. He’d contemplated temporarily going to visit his grandparents in the countryside—he’d gotten halfway there before even the trip bored him and he turned around.

No, Izaya was a creature of the city. He needed the bustle of people shuffling around on the streets beneath him, around him. He needed the constant energy and stimulation of a million lights flashing and a million voices ringing in his ears just to keep his brain focused.

Izaya needed to get away from Ikebukuro for a while, but he never would go far. He spent his months in other districts of Tokyo, keeping up with enough Yakuza-supplied jobs to maintain his lifestyle, and wheeling and dealing enough on the side to keep the strings he wanted to keep.

The trouble was getting rid of the strings he wanted to fade away. That was the reason for abandoning Ikebukuro to begin with. It was simple psychology; when you gave people or things space, you forgot about them. Ikebukuro needed to be the grounds for the war that awakened Celty’s head, Izaya knew this, but if he stayed in the city, everyone would suspect that he was up to something. He needed to get away, let people forget that his face was associated with the rising violence of the color gangs. Time healed wounds, and the city would remain scarred as long as he remained there. Egos had been bruised and feelings had been hurt, but it was amazing what a couple of months apart could do to save such a relationship, especially when human minds were so quick and willing to forgive and forget.

After a few months’ time, he might not be welcomed back into the city with open arms, but everyone besides his dear friend Shizuo would be more than likely to neglect his presence, or at least neglect to think that it meant anything serious.

He needed that time and space for those old spider threads of connection to shrivel up and fly away, and once they had, he could come back and create an entire new web of connections to manipulate.

Now was that time. Six months had passed, enough for Izaya to think that he could return to the district he was ever so fond of without any hassle. Coming back to Ikebukuro was like coming home. The sights, the smells, the sounds; Ikebukuro was simply unlike any other place in Tokyo. No other place held the magic or the tension that these streets did, nothing recharged Izaya’s spirits like the sound of Simon’s poor Japanese boasting cheap and delicious sushi, or the far off whinnies of an unearthly motorbike with a familiar, surprisingly down-to-earth headless rider. There was nowhere else in the world that you could see sudden trash cans flying stories off the ground and landing with a mangled CRASH some three blocks away.

True, Izaya loved people… but if he had to pick, he loved the people here more than anywhere else. If Ikebukuro was his home, then the citizens of Ikebukuro were his family.

It was already dark when his train pulled into the city. The man dropped his bags off at a local motel until he could find a new apartment the next day, and headed back down into the city to absorb the sights and sounds and smells and energy that his body had been yearning for these past few months. He walked down well lit streets, and not so well lit ones, strolling with his hand in his pocket and wrapped loosely around his trusty flickblade, should he encounter any problems.

After strolling the city for nearly an hour, Izaya felt refreshed enough to return to his room and crash for the evening, but just as he was about to turn around… a familiar young blond appeared at the end of the block.

Izaya couldn’t help the grin that stretched over his face, or the way his heart beat a little faster to wonder what sort of reaction this meeting would hold for him. Though once endlessly predictable, Masaomi Kida’s behaviors had grown significantly more interesting in their last times together, and Izaya could only wonder what kind of man the teen was growing into. He was suddenly quite excited to find out.

Before he was sure whether or not the boy had spotted him (though it wasn’t as if he had ever intended on hiding), he called out to him as if greeting a dear old friend, and not someone whose life and behavior he'd somewhat-maliciously manipulated on several occasions, “Kida! You’ve come back to Ikebukuro as well?”

[Deleted]

It had been sometime since Kida Masaomi had wandered these streets. A part of him would like to say that his time away with Saki had made him more mature, more aware of the world around him but he had been wrong before. In fact, this would be a lie to himself. It seemed like everyone would forever be one step ahead of him, or too far behind. When he was stuck in the isolated regions Izaya had sent him to, he had thought that his lack of internet access had been a personal hell. Every day he wished that he could once again re-unite with his friends, but when he finally could talk to them again, he found himself at a loss for words. Kida always had a harder time talking with his intimate friends…It was so much easier to talk and flirt with strangers. There was never anything to lose in it. He could make any lewd comment he wished, and they would either laugh, or flee. If they ran, he would never have to worry about seeing them again. No, strangers didn’t haunt Kida’s thoughts...Only the people close to him did…People whose lives he could ruin.

Or people who could ruin his own.

Izaya’s voice had the same effect of a sudden movement in a horror film. It caused the boy’s body to visibly flinch…it caused the hair on his arm to stand on end. There was no greater threat to Kida Masaomi than that of Izaya Orihara. The last time they had talked, it had only taken a few carefully selected words from the man to send the boy in a fit of anger and confusion, crying and screaming into his cell phone. There was no fighting with Izaya when it came to words, for his were as sharp and quick as the blade of his knife. Since he was first approached by him, Kida had been ripped to shreds on so many occasions that he often found stitching his mental scars closed a practical improbability. If one was to stand on the outside, and look in on the boy’s situation, they would be sure to wonder why the boy kept in contact with such a horrible figure. What masochism would keep him so bound to someone who moved him like a pawn? It was just as Izaya had it put it, all those months ago in his apartment as Kida so foolhardily knocked on the door. Masaomi was his “Sacrificial King” in the sick game he played, and much like a chess piece, Kida had given up his will to move on his own.

Because moving against the ‘God’ of the city of Ikebukuro would be equivalent to moving against gravity.

The man Kida hated so was exactly as he remembered. Smiling. Cocky. In the artificial glow of the city at night, the boy watched as his nightmare approached him. For some reason, it seemed that in Izaya’s head, the two were still on good terms. It seemed like he thought that even though Kida had sat in the dark sobbing for the better part of the night Izaya had last called him, they were associates. Izaya had ruined his life, and now he was carrying on polite conversation.

The sick, sick bastard.

The look on Kida’s face as he faced Izaya Orihara was one that a normal person never witnesses. It was a face of true loathing, of vile contempt. The boy who once flirted and laughed had vanished, and in his place stood a remnant of himself. A specter. It was exactly as Izaya had predicted. Kida Masaomi was human, and humans would never be a variable statistic.

“……….What the hell do YOU want, Izaya?”

The honorific that Kida normally placed after Izaya’s name was replaced with an accusing tone. His voice, much too loud for such settings, trailed off into the night. Sometimes, Kida wondered if Izaya was even human. When they had first met, Saki had called him an ESPer. There was never a reason for Kida to believe such things, but the man’s appearance in the late hour caused his mind to involuntarily think otherwise.

[UndergroundGod]

Ah, so it seemed some memories held much firmer than others.

Izaya’s lips curled into the cruel interpretation of a smile as he watched the boy shudder and immediately bristle, just at the sight of him. His clay colored eyes were ogling the boy much like one would look at a pig ready for the slaughter, ready to laugh in his face for even briefly thinking that his anger was some sort of shield against him. Because that’s all his anger was. If Kida had hopelessly accepted that Izaya could and would manipulate him, no matter his intentions, then he wouldn’t be angry. He’d be resigned, calm, in much the way that Saki acted around him. She had long since learned the resistance was futile and even though she was no longer a willing participant in his schemes, she knew better than to think she could escape him.

Anger was the crutch of the nearly fallen. Izaya thought he heard Simon say something like that to him once.

Really now, if Kida hadn’t been able to escape Izaya’s plotting before, what made him think he had any more power to do so now? The information dealer had no firm plan, as of yet, but that didn’t mean that this powerless blond boy before him wouldn’t fall victim once again to the strings of the puppet master, if Izaya so chose to manipulate him. He’d fallen once, and then, even after knowing the twisted horrors that Izaya could bring forth, he fell again.

Perhaps it was just that Kida forgot exactly what sort of person Izaya was. Though he wanted all of humanity to love him, knew it wasn’t likely. Because of that, he had learned to manipulate feelings of hate just as well as feelings of fear, or friendship, or depression. It would be silly of him to need to lose a pawn just because said pawn refused to obey him. The whole point was that Izaya didn’t care how someone wanted to act around him, because he would moves the pieces on the board in such a way that one didn’t have a choice but to react exactly the way Izaya intended.

The one emotion Izaya still had any trouble pinpointing from time to time was love. He underestimated its power before, and had hopefully learned something from his mistakes.

Honestly, this was a roundabout way of thinking that Kida’s anger towards him now was just silly. The teen couldn’t hurt him, he couldn’t get whatever revenge it was he so seemingly desired. There was no victory in this meeting for Kida. His reaction to their previous reunion was actually much more fascinating a thing to study, as he had behaved so nonchalantly then, despite the fact that it had been solely Izaya’s planning that had led to Saki’s injuries. Izaya figured that was perhaps because of his friend’s presence, Mikado Ryuugamine, but there were no such people around to put a damper on Kida’s anger. Izaya was now facing the brunt of the blond’s bottled up rage towards him.

Izaya continued to grin, unperturbed, as he tried to envision Kida’s thoughts. His best guess was that Kida could only be guessing answers to his own question, though the teen’s imagination surely had to be running away with him, far away from anything Izaya would even dream of contemplating at the moment. Part of Izaya’s reason for returning to the city was to see what pieces he had to work with. He needed to know who was in the city and what sort of condition they were in before he could know who he could move into what position, after all.

His goals were set, but the means, not so much. The angry determination on Kida’s face not to be used again only made Izaya’s resolve harden even further. He would need to use him again, if for no other reason than to prove to both Kida and himself that he could.

But after just a few seconds had elapsed (long enough for the malevolent grin to seem like nothing more than a flash of emotion across his face), the look was replaced by a defensive grin, his hands open and raised as if he were surrendering his arms to the enemy, leaning slightly away from Kida. All body language meant to look defensive, meant to give Kida a bubble of safety.

Even if Kida didn’t trust him, it was impossible to completely avoid the subconscious effect of body language, and Izaya knew it. It was just one factor of many he used to manipulate everyone around him.

“Is it suddenly a crime to talk to an old acquaintance?” he quipped with a hint of mock surprise. “It’s been a while since we’ve talked, since you did me that little… favor.” His voice was sickeningly innocent as he continued with a carefully placed shrug, “I just wanted to find out how you’re doing.”

Then a grin spread back over his face, some vaguely twisted thing with hidden intent, though it put on a good show of trying to feign innocence. “Oh, and how is Saki?”

[Deleted]

What was this madman that was so intent on making Kida’s life miserable?

All that time ago, if Kida’s base instincts had told him to run, he would have been cleared from this utter madness. If he wasn’t such a sucker for a pretty face, he wouldn’t be trapped in this nightmare. Unintentionally, his eyes flitted to his scarf, which gave off a slightly phosphorescent glow in the dim light of the morning hours. It now seemed incredibly stupid. Why had he come out? What had possessed him to walk out into the night, unarmed? A part of him, the imaginative part of a human subconscious that arises only in the harsh hours of the morning, thought that the reason could be Izaya. Izaya had moved him here, his long fingers moving through the night, grabbing Kida and moving him into place. However, such thoughts were irrational and actions impossible. Izaya Orihara was human, he would be capable of no such thing. Still, the thought lingered.

Whatever this man was, he would remain in Kida’s life, controlling him like an evil specter. He would push Kida into a dark chasm, and as he fell forever, Izaya’s words would replay in his mind, and his brain would begin to tell him:

“He never pushed you. You jumped.”

All this time away from everything…It had slowly driven the boy to the brink of insanity. His eyes seemed distant, like a whipped dog who just wants one last chance to bite before it is shot down. Under Izaya’s orders, he had seen and done numerous illegal and sometimes violent things. Each and every time, he would return to the strangely clean living arrangements that were provided for himself and Saki. Unlike the girl, whose pale faced never changed, whose unrelenting constancy of devotion never once wavered, Kida would cry. It was embarrassing, to sit in the open and cry in front of her, but as the blood from his palms stained the white ottoman he had collapsed upon, the girl would hold him. Normally, he would have liked to be held by a girl. In a usual setting he would have joked and flirted. Saki, on the other hand, was different. There was no other girl that would stand in the rain and help Kida beat someone down. There was no other girl who would hold him as he cried afterwards. No one else understood the underground of the city. No one else could fathom what manipulation Kida faced, the true horrors behind his bad jokes and smiles. Saki loved Kida Masaomi as a whole. She took both the broken halves and pushed them together, and for that, he let her have them.

To hear Izaya ask casually about her like that…

It made Kida want to rip both his ears off, vomit, throw them upon it, then crush them and feed the whole mess to the man. He had developed some anger issues since he had last left, and the main source of them now stood before him. The way Izaya moved, the way his jacket played upon his shoulders and elbows. To Kida, it was quite reminiscent of a snake. The man wanted nothing more in the world but to use others for his own enjoyment. A snake on the outside, looking into the cage, laughing at all the people that thought they had control of it. That was this man, if anything could ever describe him.

“You know very well where Saki is. 'How is she doing?'... She has undoubtedly texted you, you bastard.

The true reason, which Kida knew in his heart, for coming out this morning was in fact, to have this encounter. Three weeks prior, while Kida and Saki were in a mission somewhere near the docks of downtown Osaka, Saki had received a message from Izaya. While Saki was in the bathroom that day, and left her things with Kida, he had secretly reached into her bag and removed her cell phone. This was an immense violation of trust, but in that moment it had to be done. However, as Kida read the message, it made no sense to him. It went along the lines of:

“Mssg: 12:48p.m. Oy, hazard mats. Shining. Great Galapagos Islands. Backwards.2345 Six eight nine. “

The next morning, when Kida awoke, there was a tiny note placed on the table beside his bed. It was written on parchment in the shape of a heart, and in perfect, clean characters it read:

“Masaomi, Izaya has compelled me to come back to Ikebukuro. He has said he wants you to do something, and it is much safer for you if I weren’t to accompany you………”

The rest of the textbook-style writing was lost as Kida’s clenched fist obliterated the letter. How could he do this? Kida had no way of talking to Mikado or Sonohara, and now Saki was gone? The boy stood quickly, wet salty tears running down his face. Angry and confused, he threw the expensive furniture around their hotel room, looking for any remnant of the girl he loved, but alas, she was perfect, and there was no trace of her in his life yet again. Thus he had gone back to the city he hated so much, to search for anyone with answers.

He found himself willing to do anything if he could only have Saki back.

"WHERE IS SHE IZAYA?"

Where
IS
SAKI

[UndergroundGod]

Really, Kida made it all too easy. He had played into Izaya’s hands long before they had ever met, and as much as the boy seemed to want to learn from his mistakes… there was just no escaping Izaya.

Reading people was what Izaya did for a living. He’d never had formal schooling, but he was sure he could predict a person’s behavior more accurately than the best trained psychologist. He made it a hobby to study humans, to study their reactions, to see how they acted when forced into terrible situations. Sometimes, they were situations that he had construed, and other times… he was just an accidental observer.

Though quantum theorists did claim that even just observing an experiment affected its outcome, Izaya liked to think that he had long ago since taken his presence into account when it came to manipulating those around him.

Either way, Izaya just found it all too easy to make Kida do exactly what he wanted him to do. Izaya had never really intended it, but it seemed that Kida was going to be nearly as easy to infuriate as Shizuo currently was. Izaya only hoped that something he could do in the future would change all that… the last thing he needed was another Shizuo in town. That man was just so difficult to deal with, because it was nearly impossible to get him to listen to reason.

Kida, at least, could still be reasoned with. He was angry, but he wasn’t acting out against Izaya, and for now that was all that mattered.

Now, of course Izaya knew he had sent Saki away from Kida. She sent him a text the morning she left saying she’d done as he’d asked, but he honestly hadn’t done anything malicious to her. He hadn’t even been in Ikebukuro when she’d returned, which had to have been about two weeks ago.

Izaya loved that even though he had lost Saki’s complete devotion, he hadn’t really lost her faith. While she was now free to move independently, she still believed heavily in what Izaya told her, and believed that he had the power to accomplish nearly anything he chose. She knew, deep in her heart, there was no sense fighting him, because he would get what he wanted by whatever means necessary and it was usually distinctly less painful to just go along with what he planned, rather than to struggle against him when he would prevail regardless. She knew very well that if Izaya asked her to get away from Kida because her presence was going to be dangerous for him, than it most likely was.

Besides, with what Izaya had asked of Kida after that, wasn’t it better that he sent her away? Did her really want her with him when he went there?

“I haven’t done anything with her,” he said honestly, the words accompanied by a shrug. He loved how riled up people behaved when he simply remained calm in the face of threatening behavior. There was something all too delicious about watching someone lose their cool as he continued to respond casually. “I just returned to the city a few hours ago, and I haven’t been in contact with her since I told her to come back. What, she hasn’t been in contact with you?”

[Deleted]

An expression of pure shock fell across the shadowed face of Kida Masaomi. What sort of deranged sociopathic game was the information broker playing now? The enigmatic and ridiculous expression plastered across the Orihara’s face led the boy to believe that he was bluffing, but then again, everything about the man’s body posture whispered:

“I’m being natural, don’t doubt me…”

So, what was Kida left to believe?

The truth was, Saki hadn’t contacted him. It was as if she had found out what Izaya had made him do. Kida juxtaposed himself into her mind, imagined himself, Izaya’s blood-splattered puppet plastered against her otherwise clean new life. What was he but a toy, a toy that spoke rehearsed phrases in a calm voice? A dancer that smiled on stage? A thing that danced and played his part? Saki had probably figured that he had fallen for Orihara’s cunning manipulation and decided to run while it was still possible. That’s what Masaomi wanted to think….However, which could he trust, a sliver of a hope, or his lying eyes?

It was possible that Orihara had nothing to do with Saki’s lack of contact, but still, it seemed like the bastard had a hand in everything. The man was like a baby, roaming about the city, messing with everything and breaking it, but delivering an innocent smile to calm the people around it. Kida was sick of him.

’One day…’ The boy secretly wished in his head. ‘One day I will be walking in the street and find his body under a vending machine with police tape around it.’

Kida, in a flash of a second, imagined himself stepping over that ribbon, ignoring the words printed in intervals:

KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT

It would be in that moment that the boy would seek his revenge for everything. His foot would crack the man’s face in like a cell phone screen. It would sound like……….THAT NOISE….the one that emitted over his cell. It would gush up red blood, the same that stained Kida’s face. The ventriloquist of the city would be dead, and he would be free to do whatever he wished.

“Perverted fantasies come from tortured individuals.”

…….Or porn.

With a shake of the head, Masaomi remembered that he was still facing the man he hated, very much alive.

There were still some other considerations he had to make before speaking.

It was possible that Izaya had moved Saki away from Kida for her own safety, but no……..Why the hell would IZAYA do anything that would benefit any other than himself?

It was also possible Saki was avoiding him for some reason, and Izaya had nothing to do with it….

……….Or, Saki could be waiting in his apartment, wearing just stocki-

It wasn’t the time to think of that.

Faced with such a situation, there was only one course of action: the truth. It was never wise to tell the truth to the face of a liar, but this late, in this compromised position, it was the only option.

Hesitating only slightly, Kida spoke, attempting to cover the shakiness of his voice with sheer nonchalance.

“No. She hasn’t. I thought she may have told you where she is staying…I did as you said, and I just want to see her.”

[UndergroundGod]

He knew that Kida couldn’t help but believe him. The boy had fallen for his words over and over and it would be no different today. The major difference now was that Izaya was actually telling the truth, which wasn’t exactly a common occurrence. He usually told bits of truth to give his words viability, but they were scattered with half-truths and lies of omission, twisted words and false body language. It was all a ploy, all a trick to lead a person on.

Izaya hadn’t always been a monster, but he had been trained well.

But this time he was being honest, and that was almost a surprise to Izaya, as well. It was hard to imagine that Saki had contacted neither him nor Kida. Saki wasn’t the type of girl to just up and disappear from both their radars; it was much too likely that she would remain loyal to one of them, at least. He would have thought she would text someone her whereabouts. The last Izaya had heard, she was heading back towards Ikebukuro. He knew nothing else.

Though Izaya didn’t jump to the conclusion that that meant anything bad had happened to her. It wasn’t like he’d tried to send her a text or anything, and he had no clue if Kida had tried to call her or not. Maybe she wasn’t dodging them, because it wasn’t dodging if there was nothing to reply to in the first place. Izaya’s last instruction had been to lie low, and maybe she had followed that order a bit too seriously, deciding not to send out any messages until she was contacted first.

“You did an excellent job, too,” Izaya replied with an offhanded grin. The assassination, a job that had to be made to look like an accident, had been completely set up by Izaya beforehand. Kida just needed to show up to figuratively push the right button at the right time and send the designated target hurtling over the side of a bridge. All had gone according to plan, thanks to Kida’s prompt actions.

“So what benefit do I get from keeping you from the very reason you’ve been such a help to me?” Izaya asked obviously, and then answered his own question, “The answer is none. It doesn’t help me to hide Saki from you when I have more work for you, and she’s the biggest reason why you’ve been so cooperative.”

The logic was sound. If the flies were swarmed around the honey, then throwing out the vinegar to catch more was stupid. Izaya was getting exactly what he wanted, why should he change his methods now? Taking Saki away from Kida would only make the boy angry at him, and make him less likely to help him.

Anyway, it’d probably be a good idea to find out if Kida had made the effort to contact her first. She might simply be waiting somewhere for his call. He asked plainly, “Have you tried calling her or sending her a message yet?”

“Either way,” he decided to continue, because a text or call might not get an instant reply and he wanted Kida to have an option in case that fell through, “I guess there are a few places I know she could be. When she was still working with me, I showed her a number of safe houses all over the city and taught her how to get into them. She could be staying at one of the. We could take a look around for her if you want.”