Izaya sat in the commissary alone aside from Smith and Brady. The rest of the facility had been put on a high priority lock-down. Labs were sealed and security personnel combed the halls searching for the escaped female. Brady sat across from Izaya and was going over all of the data that he had on the female while Izaya savored his steak and beer. Smith paced impatiently behind Brady which only encouraged Izaya to eat slower. Finally Smith could no longer hold his tongue. “How can you just sit there eating a steak while there is a specimen lose that is worth millions, tens of millions of dollars?? If she has gotten outside the facility and fell into the wrong hands it could be disastrous!!” Izaya finished chewing the bite in his mouth in no hurry whatsoever then took a swallow of beer before answering. “Well for one, why spend time wandering the halls aimlessly when we can let your boys do the grunt work. Secondly, this steak is fucking good. You should have one.” Izaya took another bite of steak leaving maybe a couple more left on the plate. Smith was irate to the point that his face was changing colors. So far Brady had been able to contain his anxiety to some extent but Izaya could smell his apprehensiveness.<br/><br/>Just as Smith was about to go into another tirade about Izaya’s incompetence, a voice broke in over the com device each one of them had in their ears. Well, Smith and Brady had theirs in their ear while Izaya’s was just floating around somewhere in his body. “We followed the trail of bloody footprints until they were non-existent. Its only a guess sir, but it appears that she may have went into the Dead Zone.” The Dead Zone was the original facility that had been abandoned due to a situation that had been wiped from any physical record not long after Izaya had been created. Izaya’s memories of that particular area were far from being fond memories, Smith reacted exactly the way that Izaya knew he would. “Well get in there after her.” Then in nearly the same breath he barked more orders. “Control, disengage the lock-down into the Dead Zone. All troops in Quad 4 report to major Hicks. Use extreme caution.” Brady quickly spoke up. “Alive! We need her alive.” Smith repeated Brady in so many words. “Non-lethal force only. Lethal force is not authorized.”<br/><br/>Izaya swallowed the last bite of his steak and downed the last of the bottle of beer. “You know you just killed every one of those men you sent in there. Are you sure you watched the same tape as we did? She will fucking slaughter them, but no skin off of our teeth. You might as well put out a want ad for more fodder. Those aren’t coming back.” Izaya wiped his mouth and stood up from the table. “Now if you'll excuse us, it is time for us to go to work.” With that said, Izaya strolled casually past the two men whistling the theme song to the Munsters.<br/><br/>It wasn’t long before Izaya was standing before the entrance to the Dead Zone. he pretended outwardly that entering that part of the facility didn’t phase him but inside, the memories of that place still haunted him. Even before he went in, the smell of death lingered in the hallway from the entrance being opened previously. He had been one of the few test subject that made it out of there alive and now he was the only one left. He could smell the decomposing and long decomposed corpses of patients and employees that littered the Dead Zone. Some of them had been friends, the last ones he ever let in close enough to call friend. He couldn’t really feel pain anymore but this place made him remember what pain felt like, not only physical but mental and emotional torment as well.<br/><br/>He kept trying to push out of his mind that he would be delivering this girl right back into the same pain and anguish that made him despise this place so badly. He had to push it from his mind to get the job done, nearly every time. This is the first time he has had to come back in here in all those years. He didn’t know if he could push the memories back down. The recording of the girl kept playing over and over again in his mind. Sometimes he saw himself as the girl, seeing himself strapped down and subject to their whim. He became too strong to contain so they did the next best thing to be able to continue studying him, they gave him a job. They fed him the whole line about he was helping to save the future of humanity and a few eggs need to be broken to make an omelet. The needs of the many outway the needs of the few. He had heard them all and right this minute they sounded like more of a crock of shit than they ever had before.<br/><br/>Despite his misgivings, he had continued tracking her using his augmented senses while the soldier boys continued doing the search by the numbers thing. So when he saw her at the far end of a hallway about to be home free of the facility, he actually considered letting her go. Even as he called out to her by the name he saw on her file, his intentions were still unknown to him. “Xerxes! They’ll never stop hunting you even once you pass those doors. You will always be looking over your shoulder.” While he spoke, he continued to stroll casually towards her doing his best to seem non-threatening. He had made it about halfway down the hall to her when he heard the footsteps turn the corner behind him.<br/><br/>“Freeze Freak!! Another move and we’ll fill you with enough tranquilizer to kill a horse!” Izaya turned and held up his hands towards the security, basically hired mercs. “She ain’t running. Give us a chance to reason with her.” Izaya did not get the response that he wanted. “You can step aside or we’ll be dragging two freaks back with us.”<br/><br/>“That’s a bad idea boys.” Before he could get the words out of his mouth, a dozen tranquilizer darts were cutting the air towards her. Izaya morphed his body flattening out and expanding to block the hallway and caught every single one of the darts. The darts vanished into his body and he returned to his former state. “Do you mother fuckers even speak English?”