Katie O'Connor felt confident as she walked through the streets of Philadelphia. She was the personal assistant to Isabella-Luciano, one of the most accomplished and renowned dons in the country. Not bad for a girl who'd walked off a ship a few weeks ago with nothing. As she took a deep breath, Katie finally felt like she was home. Stopping by the market on the way home, she picked out a couple apples, but when she tried to pay for them the Italian gentleman running the stall simply shook his head and smiled. Katie matched the expression. Apparently, she'd done enough to get recognized here in South Philly. Walking home and taking a bite of one of the apples, Katie looked out as the sun set over the Delaware River.

Life was good.

Until it wasn't.

Katie O'Connor's work for the IRA had taught her a great deal, and it didn't take her long to realize she was being followed. Casually, her hand went to the knife in her purse. Half her mind cursed her for not asking Isabella about carrying a gun or getting a bodyguard. The other half of her mind focused on keeping her alive. Unless she happened to run into someone she knew, the safest places she could go would either be a police station or a family business. Running through the possibilities in her head, she knew The Treble Club was just a couple blocks away. She made sure to walk briskly, but casually enough where she'd still seem ignorant. No use provoking anything. 

When a woman in a bright yellow dress walked by on the other side of the street, it gave Katie an excuse to glance back over her shoulder. The man following her was huge, monstrously looming above the crowd with an unblinking stare directed right at her. Tall, muscular, and scarred.

She walked faster.

Katie was half a block away from the Treble Club, her senses focused behind her, when the man in black stepped out of the alley and gracefully slid in the needle into her neck. She could see the needle flash in the sun for just a moment before the world went dark. She heard a couple people shout, and the last thing she felt was the sensation of the large man tossing her onto his shoulder.

Katie awoke in a state of confusion. Was it the drugs or the fear that kept her remembering exactly what happened to her?

Suddenly, it all hit her at once. She sat up like a shot and, feeling lightheaded, immediately regretted doing so. She took her head in her hands, forcing herself to breath deep and to avoid tears. Crying never helped anything, Jimmy told her. He'd said that the day before he died.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she looked around her. Her hands were cuffed above her head, attached to a chain. Her clothes seemed to be intact. She was in some sort of basement, that much was clear. She tested the chain, unsurprisingly finding that she wasn't able to pull it free. Her motion hurt her wrist, but it also got a reaction. She heard a door creak open and footsteps as a woman somewhere else in the basement started crying. 

Katie froze as the footsteps stopped, but exhaled as they faded away again.

The next time she heard the footsteps, they didn't stop. She recognized the man who'd stabbed her with the needle, and as she looked up at him she did her best to seem confident instead of afraid. She suspected she failed.

The man standing in front of her had placed a lantern on a barrel, illuminating the dirty, concrete basement she'd been in for the past day. Few hours? She had no idea. 

The man in black would have been a handsome man, if he didn't seem quite so disturbing. He had long, dark hair and an intensity in his eyes that made you want to look away. He pulled up a chair and flipped it around, lowering himself onto it and resting his arms on its back as he stared unblinkingly at Katie. She looked up at him, before turning away, and she spoke first, which seemed to please him.

"Who are you?"

His voice was unexpectedly smooth.

"That doesn't really matter, does it?"

Not knowing how to answer, Katie stayed quiet and the man in black continued talking as the monstrously large man trudged down the stairs and stood behind him.

"It's a hard question to answer. I've had many names, just as snake has many skins, if it's lucky. And I'm very lucky. At least I always thought so, until I've been hearing whispers about people looking for you. Who are you? Who's looking for you?"

Maybe she could scare him into letting her go? Isabella did have a reputation, after all.

"My name is Katie O'Connor. I'm the personal assistant of Don Isabella Byrne. Let me go, and I'll ensure that she doesn't pursue you. Keep me, and she'll find me. Find you."

The man in black shrugged. 

"Maybe she will, Katie O'Connor. But I suspect she won't."

The man stood, and Katie shivered as she felt his eyes on her. Subconsciously, she tried to shift her body as well as she could while chained and draw up her knees to cover herself. The man sighed, as the larger man behind him continued to stare.

"Miss O'Connor, I'm not going to bother you. Hurt you, yes. But more mundane acts of violence are, well, beneath me."

She heard his footsteps move up the stairs and she exhaled, before his voice called down again. 

"Unfortunately, I can't make any promises on the part of my associate."

Katie saw the larger man's teeth smile in the darkness before everything went black again.

"You know, Miss O'Connor, the mind can only take so much pain before it shatters. You are just as remarkable as your aura suggested. Do you think you've been able to endure so much due to some innate quality? Or is it your experience that makes you so resistant? Perhaps both?"

Focus. Cold metal. Table. Be cold.

"Knives. Hammers. Acid. But here you are, still fighting me. What are you hoping for? Rescue? I suppose it's possible for you to live some semblance of a life, if you had someone to shell out for some expensive doctors. Perhaps that's keeping you going? The idea of rescue?"

She felt an icy cold hand grab her jaw and the man in black's voice slither into her ear.

"Oh. I never sent any ransom letter. How absentminded of me. You see, I didn't take you for money. Or so Mordred could get his rocks off. I took you for this."

Katie's eyes demanded an answer, a why. When the man in black responded, he spoke with a strange reverence.

"Because there is a power in true suffering, the sort of suffering that pushes outwards to strain reality itself. And when someone of your particular aura suffers in this way? Well, that's something truly special. Someone like you could never understand the strands, the beams, and the breaking that must occur."

He paused.

"One more day. If you managed to live one more day, to provide that much more power to weaken this strand, then I'll send a letter. Deal?"

Katie couldn't respond. When she heard the first sound of the flamethrower ignite, the world went black again.

A monstrously large man had given a letter to one of the many bodyguards roaming around South Philly. When Isabella received it, the outside edges were dirtied, but the seal was still intact. Breaking it, she read:

Don Isabella Byrne,

This letter is to inform you that you can call off your searches for one Katherine O'Connor. She is currently serving me and will continue to do so until she is no longer able. I send this letter to you to keep my word to her, but also to clarify the particulars of this situation for you.

Stay in South Philadelphia, forget Katie O'Connor, who you barely knew, and you will receive a payment of 30 million dollars in one week. If she lives that long, you might even get her back alive.

Hunt for her, and you'll find only death. 

RF

The man in black's voice was barbed velvet.

"You know, Miss O'Connor. Someone once said that there are three deaths: when the body ceases to function, when the body is consigned to the grave, and when your name is spoken for the last time. I wonder if that's true, because in my experience, well, I see many more than just three."

Katherine O'Connor closed her eyes, trying to block him out.

"The first death, I think, is when you want to die. Humans are such base, bestial creatures. Refreshing in a way, but so programmed. Survive. Survive. Survive. Every cell of your body is pushing for life. But when you decide you'd prefer death? I think that's dying, in a way. The death of spirit, the will to live."

"The second death is the death of the mind. Bodies can function. Blood pumps. Lungs breathe. But the mind, whether it's out of desperation or defense, ceases to function. It snaps, sometimes forever."

"No, I think the last death is the death of the body. Even if you make the choice to kill yourself, the body will fight you every step of the way. Even without a spirit or a mind, the body trudges along. It endures."

Katherine kept her eyes closed as she felt the man walk closer to her.

"But this world is not just flesh and meat and blood. Your suffering, your beautiful suffering, breaks through the barriers that hold this world together. I've done this a lot, Katherine. I am a being who is practiced in the art of administering suffering, and let me tell you, you are truly remarkable."

She felt a blood stained hand caress her jaw and rest there, holding her mouth closed. The smell and taste of blood on his hand would have made her vomit if she weren't so used to it.

"Katherine, I mentioned those three deaths. Using the fingers of your left hand, please indicate at which stage of death you believe you are."

Katherine didn't move, keeping her eyes closed.

"Ah. My mistake. I forgot. We removed those already. Rest up for tonight, Katherine. I suspect we'll accomplish quite a bit of good work together this evening."

The bloodstained hand patted her cheek before it pulled away and she heard the sound of footsteps exiting the basement. 

Isabella trembled with fury as she looked at the note she handed it off violently to Gavin who read it once, and again without so much as a hint of his thoughts.  His wife, the woman they called Dragon, paced. 

"You know much about the kid's history?"  Gavin uncharacteristically was the one to speak first.  There were rare occasions when his wife needed him in this way, and today with a young girl's life on the line ... one not much older than their Aurora, he knew his role and was willing to play it.

Bella shook her head.  

The truth was Bella was far more scary to Gavin when she wasn't talking.  If Bella was talking she still good and kind and open to suggestions.  She would listen to her better angels.  When she was quiet he could see that part of her that was the darker bit of Salvatore.  After learning what he was truly capable of in the end, Gavin didn't like the idea of her emulating him much at all.

"What do we know?"  He tried to make her talk.  

"She's Irish.  History with the IRA.  They could be pissed at her I think she fled..."

"Irish."  Gavin said with a small sigh.  The Byrne family had fallen on their bad side once before and Bella's last dealings with them had left a very poor taste in his mouth.  He could only hope she and Will had been as good as they boasted... or perhaps this was the cycle of revenge finally coming back around again.  Bella reaping the fruits of her bitter seeds sown so long ago.

Bella took the note back.  "RF.  Why bother signing his name at all?"

"Could be out of habit.  Could be he thinks you know him.  Could be that he wants you to know him..."  Gavin leaned against the window frame that looked out onto the backyard of Hollowood estate.

Bella seethed and continued to pace, staring at the letter as if it would give up some secret it hadn't already.

"Is it safe to assume we're not calling off our hunt for the girl then?"  Bella needed to make choices.  Her mind was playing through too many scenarios, paralyzed by her fear of getting it wrong... he'd seen her like this only a handful of times in life.  One time stood out, that cold day outside of Agent Garret's home.  She would have spent all night trying to find the best way in when he and Will both knew, the only thing for it was to grab the bull by the horns and ride for as long as they could.  They would live or die by their wits, but nothing would have been accomplished by standing outside the house forever.

"I won't let this fucker have her..."  She said.  "I have a responsibility to that kid... I've lost too many these last few years.  Rayne.  Kenzi... I can't just give her up and for something as petty as fucking cash."

Gavin pushed himself off the window frame.  He had a direction now, his Don was making her will known ... NOW he could do something.  "Alright then..."

He stalked over to the wall, tore down a map of Philly and brought it to her desk.  Slamming it down in front of her he said in his most authoritative voice, "Let's talk strategy."

The fear seemed to disappear from those aged doe's eyes as she met her husband's icy blue gaze.  She gave a small nod and walked forward.  It had been a long time since it was he and she against the world... but he could tell, she was as ready as he was to let the world know the Dragon and Wolf weren't dead just yet.

In the chaos of the war, Flagg found himself lacking an adversary. He read Katie the obituaries, reminding her of all the other things going on.

No, there would be no rescue. Not with so many other things going on.

When she gave up on that idea, her spirit finally started to fade. When she died, the last thing she saw was Randall Flagg's smiling face.