He climbed over the depressing sausage wrapped body on the floor. There should have been new packs of cigarettes under his bed that he planned to get and make use of them. He put them there long ago but they still should have been there. Unopened waiting to be burned and inhaled.

He crouched down to all fours and felt for the shoebox but found no box, only a lonely cigarette. He didn't complain but he wasn't satisfied. Rummaging through the drawer by the bedstand he retrieved a nearly empty lighter and with a few clicks it produced a small flame and burned the end of the nicotine filled roll.

He produced smoke like a failed machine. His knee bent in order to support his elbow which firmly held the cancer filled temptation.

His strangely sober gaze then fell to the dark and glazed over one on the floor. Barefoot he moved his foot to nudge at Carlos's side. The flesh under the blanket squished then tensed, a natural reaction to the unknown contact.

"Where is she?" he said straining his gaze and sending over a stream of smoke.

Carlos pushed his tired body off of the floor and pulled down the covers. He crossed his legs and stared back at Kaden. It wasn't that he didn't hear his question it was just that he didn't care at that moment. His eyes went to the cigarette at his mouth and it reminded him that it had been months since he had last smoked and he promised himself that he would quit. This boy was now tempting him and his clean streak would soon be broken.

"Put that out," Carlos demanded, fighting back the urge to take it from him.

Kaden sucked in a lungful of smoke then blew it out in short billows and inhaled it back into his mouth to reroute the smoke to exit through his nose.

"You don't like drugs?" he mused staring down at his cigarette. He caught Carlos's stare but it was one of interest rather than disgust. "I'm sure you must have used all kinds of drugs in Mexico. They have all the good shit." He pulled his knees in. "So," his voice trailed trying to find a clean topic to discuss, "How was Mexico?"

Carlos chuckled. "'How was Mexico?' you say," Carlos mocked, "Not 'How are you holding up?' or 'Whatcha gonna do now?'"

Kaden considered it then shrugged.

"But then again," Carlos continued, "A junkie like you would want to know what the pure shit feels like. Of course."

The former junkie pursed his lips and took in the verbal abuse that stung worse than the needles he used. "That wasn't what I was going to ask." He flinched and then took a breath of the cigarette which was almost extinguished. "You were really famous. Online. They had videos of your fights."

"Oh," was all he had in response.

"Well I guess seeing dead bodies isn't new for you considering that's how you won your fights, right?" Kaden said, "Lilina and Sofia were just...."

"That is not something I'm used to," Carlos interjected, pain in his voice from the remembrance. "We don't shoot them. We just fight. That is not...That is not what...."

"What did they do to you over there?" Kaden asked trying not to pry but it so obvious that he wanted to do so.

"You really want to know?"

Kaden pressed. "This is the longest I've ever been sober enough to actually interact with anyone. Enlighten me. I might forget when I shoot up later."

Carlos's brow arched. "You still got stuff?"

"I might." Kaden smiled and let the smoking cigarette burn. "So spill."

Carlos's eyes moved from the cigarette back to Kaden's face and then he no longer regretted his actions in staying on the floor.

Then he spoke.

"You know medical care in America has gone to shit. You can't get anything anymore. I wanted to see without my glasses. Remember how they stopped making contacts back then?" he told Kaden.

"Yeah that was bullshit," Kaden smiled then commented, "But people actually went blind from using them."

"It was just a few people. One tainted batch," Carlos shrugged.

"Dude, they went blind!" Kaden laughed while still trying to prove a point.

"Yeah, yeah," he waved a hand then continued. "My dad heard that there was still a doctor that still performed laser eye surgery. He wanted to help me out so he told my mom he would be taking me somewhere. Didn't say where but he just said somewhere. He didn't tell me until I got to the car and we ended up at the airport."

Kaden stared blankly. "That's...kidnapping?"

"Apparently not when it's your own parent."

There seemed to be an understood silence then. Kaden found something dark that was going to happen. And it was the thing that imprisoned Carlos in his drug-infested blistering home country.

"He didn't lie," he said a matter-of-factly. "Got my surgery and my vision has never been better." There was no hesitation in his voice. The words came out with ease and there was no struggle to reminisce. "We just overstayed our welcome. People who knew my dad came to get us. They bagged us and took us. When they pulled them off, i really wished I couldn't see. I wanted to be blind that day so bad."

The lit end of the cigarette got dangerously close to Kaden's knuckle and Carlos took it from him and took a long drag. He let out a long trail of smoke that soon dissipated.

"What happened?" Kaden asked as he watched the smoke disappear.

He sighed and bent the cigarette in half with his fingers. "Ever seen someone get shot in the head before?"

He was taken a bit aback and then came to an understanding of his change in demeanor. How such a sweet and timid boy turned in a raging psychotic killer for the underground cartel fight ring.

"It looks so fake," he breathed, "the way the insides just come out in that instant, and then you're just dead. They did that to my dad without warning. They pulled my sack off. Then his. And then it was just spatter." He made open and closing motion with his finger to signify the spatter.

Kaden said nothing. His mouth formed a straight line and kept his trap shut.

"They thought about using me as a mule to get drugs into America but they said that wouldn't work. They thought about selling me. You know what for. Don't look at me like that."

There was only pity Kaden's eyes, but it hadn't had been the same pity he had for his sister. She can live with what happened to her even if it meant burying herself in books and projects that stacked well over her head. He was different. There such a large and significant difference in his situation that he had no room for jokes. Only pity and he almost punched himself for it. Almost.

"Then they said I was too old and no one would want me," Carlos explained. Then he chuckled and said something inaudible that brought a harsh cold shiver down Kaden's neck. "It all went down from there. They locked me up...they nearly beat me to death every other day. Not everyday. They said that they didn't want to kill me." He bit his cheek. "It was a small dark cell with a window that was too high for me to reach at the time and every now and then not the times they would beat me but...every now and then they would come into the room...and..."

It was like he went off into a far off place. Too far for Kaden to get him back but when it was obvious that he was there Kaden just leaned in intently.

"They always had a gun", he made a motion with his hands. "Right when I'm lying on the floor...praying that it's better to die...they'd put the gun to my head." His legs were crossed on the floor and Kaden could see that he clenched tight to his own ankle. He wanted to grab something and the closest thing he felt comfortable holding was himself. "They'd say something. I could never fully hear but they always said something hurtful...then, the barrel would go to my head and they'd pull the trigger." Kaden sat silently and listened and now hated that he was sober. He so badly wanted a fix and it made his skin itch. He held his breath for a moment. "There was never a bullet in the chamber. It was always empty....As long as I won fights, it was empty."

"Was there ever a bullet in the chamber?" When Kaden asked, his voice was hoarse like he was actually afraid. Even though Carlos sat right in front of him, he feared for him. What happened when he lost a fight or didn't do so well?

"Yeah," he goes, "One time. And that was it."

He didn't tell Kaden but he remembered it all too well.

The room had been dark and the only natural light came from the window above it which had chicken wire that began to curl at the edge. His eye had swollen shut and his head throbbed. There was a large cut on his forehead that had seeped blood after he had hit the pavement. His ribs ached and the bruising was starting to show on the skin. He probably had a concussion and the throbbing wasn't stopping. It hammered at his temples and his spinal cord at the base of his brain. When the door had finally nudged open he could only move his eyes. Everything hurt. They said something and he unconsciously tuned it out. He shouldn't have but he did.

He then heard what he hadn't had heard all these years. The clicking of a magazine entering the chamber of a gun and the recoil of the bullet entering the chamber. Carlos forced his swollen eye to open where he found Paolo holding a pistol, clearly loaded since it looked as if he was having difficulty holding it in his hand.

Paolo said something along the line like "You did good kid" and "Too bad you screwed up this time."

It was the warm barrel that made him move. Before Paolo's crooked finger could squeeze the trigger above Carlos's split eyebrow, Carlos grasped firmly to the gun and shifted it away from his face.

The explosion sent ringing into his ears and a bullet to embed in the wall behind him. Smoke left the barrel and there was a burn that striped Carlos's pale palm.

There was a ringing in his ear. Much louder than before. Although he couldn't hear, he was no longer blinded. He ignored the swelling in his eye and the pain in his ear.

When Paolo managed to re-aim his weapon Carlos was already alert and terrifying.

Paolo wasn't afraid because he had the gun. He only grew afraid when Carlos's grip on his wrist didn't loosen. His job was to kill the kid not stare down the barrel and watch the bullet go through his eye.

The boy didn't hesitate when the gun was once again in his face. With the strength that he had accumulated through his fights he used it to bend Paolo's elbow and make him see his own gun and what it would look like if they had switched places.

And that was it. Paolo crumpled to the concrete ground in a puddle of his own matter and Carlos was alive and well.

And very much enraged. He didn't plan to die. Not yet anyway. He wasn't going to die in a country that he never called home and he wasn't going to let people who treated him like livestock do it.

"Why did you come in here again?" Carlos asked taking a long drag of the cigarette.

Kaden concentrated on the smoke and went to grab back his cigarette but Carlos took it out of his reach. "I was looking for Korey," he said and watched Carlos put the cigarette out on the floor. There was now a small black dot on the hardwood floor. He didn't criticize him for it because it didn't bother him. He liked how much he didn't care.

"Now that you're back," Carlos began, he rested his head against the wall behind him, "You really seem to care about her now?"

Kaden thought he had a new friend for a second. He really thought that he could pry open that rock-solid exterior and find the boy that had been dragged to Mexico. He thought he got him to open up to him but he didn't. That boy was dead and what was left was nothing left but a distrusting shell of a man that wanted nothing but a girl that he thought he could not have.

"I..." Kaden tried but nothing seemed to come out. He cared. It was very little but he cared that his sister was different from the last time he saw her. He just wanted to make up for lost time. He knew very well that that could never happened but he wanted to try.

As Carlos's eyes narrowed in on Kaden, they grew startled at the rather loud crash that came from downstairs.

A door was thrown open, practically off its hinges. Chairs were tossed and fell sideways and bodies hit the floor and the walls at speeds that didn't seem humanly possible. The raggedy girl and disheveled boy fell as a tangled mess onto the kitchen floor.