Dean did a last visual sweep of the area and guards around what had once been the Wayne County Detention Facility. His position was flat on his stomach on a hill. Most of the building was in ruins, but the largest part of it, the main cell block where they housed the isolation cells was in the best condition he had seen any of the buildings in. The entire building was so heavily guarded that Dean thought that all of the survivor's he had met at the main camp were guarding the prison. There were three lines of fences, each covered in barbed wire from the bottom to top and at every corner of the fences was a large tall guard tower. The roof was patrolled with at least six guards, all carrying sniper rifles. There was only one way into the main compound by foot, a set of three sixteen foot tall gates, topped with barbed wire and each attached to one of the different fences. All of the gates had two guard towers on each end of it and there were two guards in each one. That had to be the same for all the other towers.

This other me must be a real douche, Dean thought to himself as he studied the jail. He lied to himself. Whatever is in there must be really valuable and or really dangerous. Knowing me, it's probably both... Maybe it's war prisoners. The way this place is guarded it might be a place to hold prisoners from Sa-Lucifer's camp.

Dean put down the binoculars and studied the building with his normal eyesight. This would be the toughest break in job yet. It wasn't like he could walk in through the front gate... Dean then realized how he could get into this Alcatraz with minimal issues. He looked just like the leader of the revolution. He could walk in the front door. That was sort of surprising, but a nice change from sneaking in the back.

Dean crawled out from under the bush he had been hiding under and got to his feet with a huff. Brushing dirt and leaves off his ancient leather jacket, he hoped that he looked presentably like his older self. Setting himself at a confident stride and pace, Dean headed down the hill towards the jail.

It was a short walk from the hill to the jail and Dean saluted to the men at the first guard tower as he approached.

"Hello-Ah! What the hell?" he said going from cheerful to painful in less than a second as a loud clicking noise followed a bright white light in his eyes. While he had been greeting them, the guards had turned on an enormous light to show who he was and as a bonus, blind him and seemingly scald his eyeballs.

"Oh, sorry Dean," a woman's voice yelled as the light shut off with a small boom. "Didn't know it was you."

"Yeah, I couldn't tell," he muttered, blinking painfully to try and clear the red and white blotches from his eyes. As his eyesight began to clear, red spinning lights, like that of an alarm system, began going off. A loud alarm let out a screech that made Dean's hands fly up to his ears.

"Clear!" a loud male voice shouted over the alarm as a huge creaking sound began and Dean looked up to see one side of the huge first gate opening up with just barely enough room to let a single person in. Dean took his hands off his ears and went through it. Almost as soon as he was through, the gate creaked shut and the alarms shut off. Dean breathed a sigh of relief and began heading towards the next gate. As he walked, a group of three people ran over to him in a sort of military gait. Dean stopped in his tracks when they approached him and the first one saluted.

"Sir," the guard said in a strangely familiar female voice. It was both friendly and irritated, but all business. "Glad to see you back again today. Good to see that the new radio system test worked."

"Uh, yeah, it did," Dean said, forcing a smile on his face. "So, uh, any issues?"

The guard shook their head. "No changes beyond the usual."

Dean nodded in agreement even though he had no idea what this person was talking about.

"I presume your back for another round of questioning?" the guard asked curiously.

"Uh, yes," Dean said, seizing the opportunity to make up an alibi. "Yes, yes I am."

"Alright," the guard said with a shrug, then began to walk away with the other two on her heels. "But I doubt this time will work any way as well as all the other times before."

"Wait!" Dean yelled, jogging a bit closer to her as she walked. The guard stopped and turned around, obviously irritated by his lack of understanding.

"Yes?" she asked in a slightly sarcastic voice.

Dean smiled at her awkwardly. "I might have forgotten how to get in."

The guard sighed angrily and began marching towards a small human sized door that Dean hadn't seen before after dismissing the other two guards. "Since our all powerful leader seems to have lost his mind, I obviously have to babysit him."

Dean followed her closely, wanting to hit himself for not being quicker with an excuse. The guard unlocked the human sized door with three different keys from her belt loop and then pushed it open with over exaggerated motions. She gestured for Dean to enter and he did, not wanting to test her abilities with the gun on her hip.

The guard shut and locked the door behind her before jogging past Dean to the third gate, which also had a human sized door. Pulling up three different keys from the first door, she unlocked this one much quicker and pushed it with more urgency.

"Hurry up," she snapped when Dean didn't immediately run forward to go through the gate. Dean started a bit and hurried through. As soon as she entered the gate herself, the guard slammed the door shut and began running for the front door of the prison.

It was the original door from it's days as a real prison and not a stronghold and when it slid open to let them in, Dean saw that it was six inches thick and made of solid steel. The guard breathed a huge sigh of relief and began unbuckling the chin strap of her helmet.

"Glad to be back inside," she said breathlessly, pulling off the goggles and then the main helmet. As she pulled it off, the woman shook her head and released a long think mane of almost white-blonde hair from a loose braid that had been twisted up in her helmet. Or at least half of it was. The other half of her head was shaved to the scalp and the woman smiled at Dean when she caught him staring. She had turned her head and made eye contact, revealing bright blue grey eyes that seemed to pierce Dean's soul. She was gorgeous, in a sort of punk future way.

"You've seen this enough times, Dean," she said with a slightly condescending grin that only made her hotter. "You should really consider a redesign, they're pretty stuffy."

"Yeah, uh, I'll let the other designers know," he said with a stammer. She really was a pretty girl, but what had surprised him the most was her age. She couldn't be older than eighteen, which was the youngest he had seen of all of the survivors (Besides maybe the really young kids who were first generation after the apocalypse).

The girl rolled her eyes and carried her helmet under her arm as she walked. "Come on, I might as well be the monitor for you."

"Monitor?" Dean asked, walking just a few steps behind her. They were heading deeper into the prison through a hall with no windows and lit by a mismatched line of electric lamps and loose light bulbs. The string of lights and lanterns was obviously attached to a motion detector because every time they advanced further down the hall, lights in front of them turned on and the ones behind them turned off. It gave the hallway an eerie look and the shadows contorted the girl in front of him and the floor beneath them.

"Yeah, you know? Just in case she attacks you while your going in for the interrogation," the girl said with a shrug. "I don't like it as much as the next guard, but someone has to make sure that you don't kill her. She's a valuable pawn and I know how much you hate her for what she is."

Dean felt his eyes widen when the girl mentioned the whole 'Stop you from from killing her' and he tried to force a neutral look onto his face when the guard turned around. This whole prison stank of something fishy and Dean wasn't sure what it was exactly.

"Dean? What's wrong?" she asked worriedly as she shifted her helmet to the other arm. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Oh, no, it's nothing," Dean assured her, chuckling a bit, then changing the subject. "Hey, um, what do you want me to call you?"

"What you always do," the guard said, rolling her eyes, the worry in her eyes replaced by irritation. "Novak."

"Novak," Dean repeated, recognizing the name from somewhere and trying to put her face to the name. It was right on the tip of his tongue and Dean knew that she was really important some how-

"Novak is my last name," she said in a coaxing sort of tone, breaking his thoughts off abruptly. "You know, I'm Claire Novak."

Dean's couldn't stop the look of surprise and shock when she said her name. "Claire?"

Claire Novak rolled her eyes and began walking. "This act is starting to get old, Dean," she called over her shoulder.

Dean was so shell-shocked that he only started following her again when the light's behind him began to shut off and leave him in the dark. He broke into a run, his shoes slapping on the floor of the hall with a constant 'tap-tap tap-tap' as he caught up to Claire.

"So, what do we know about the prisoners," he asked her, trying to get more information out of her about the prisoners.

Claire suddenly began laughing. It was a happy loud laugh from deep inside of her that seemed to make the lights around them grow brighter. Dean started laughing to, catching the contagious nature of her laugh. They kept walking and giggling and chuckling for the next minutes until Claire was almost in tears.

"Ah," she said, wiping at her eyes and sighing happily. "I needed a good laugh. This whole amnesia thing is pretty hilarious Dean. You know that we have only one prisoner."

Dean frowned and ran a finger across the walls of the hall while they kept walking further in. His finger came away dust covered and Dean raised his finger to his nose and recoiled a bit. It stank a bit like rotting meat and a bit like sulfur.

"We finally found something that works," Claire said happily when she looked back to see Dean recoil. "You should give Alex a day off for finding it."

"What is it?" he asked, only asking for what the substance was and why it was such a big deal, and not for the make up of it like Claire then explained to him.

"It's got sulfur, chlorine, and putrescent," Claire said, stumbling a bit on the last word, then smiling as she got it right. Claire turned back to face forward.

"Wards off shifters, vampires, and reapers," Dean muttered in surprise, wiping some of the dust from his finger to the jacket. He was deeply impressed. This Alex guy was a genius.

"Yep," Claire agreed. "That old leather notebook of your's that you left when you stormed out the last time was the real gem. Where'd you even find it?"

Damn, her hearing's amazing, Dean marveled as they walked. She was very impressive. Obviously growing up in the Apocalypse had helped her develop her sense and skills as well. "Uh, it was my dad's," Dean said, answering her final question as they reached another door.

This door was a standard prison door about seven feet tall with a swinging flap on the bottom to push food in. However, the flap was welded shut and the eye slot was locked with a padlock. Claire pulled out the key ring and undid a large padlock that latched the main door knob. "Alright, I'll be heading to the camera room," Claire said as she pulled the huge door open. "Good luck. Remember, finger print for the second door, retina for the third." She then shoved him inside and shut the door behind him.

Dean sighed to himself and continued walking through the small antechamber to the second door. Instead of a doorknob, there was a square of shining metal with a hand print set into the metal. At the top of the index finger slot was an oval shaped black scanner.

This must be the finger print for the second door that Claire was talking about, Dean said. He jogged over to the door and pressed his hand into the groove urgently. Nothing seemed to happen, but then Dean felt a burning sensation on the tip of his pointer finger and Dean wanted to pull his hand away as the heat increased, but he had to open the door. Finally, when Dean was about to pull it away, the hand scanner made a short chirp and the door swung open. Dean couldn't pull his hand away fast enough and massaged his finger as he walked to the next door.

This door was way more straight forward and all Dean had to do was look into a binocular like device and the door swung open without a sound.

Dean wasn't sure what he was going to see inside: a demon, a shifter, a ghost, anything they had ever hunted over the years. But nothing prepared him to see a girl chained to a chair inside of an almost exact replica of Bobby's panic room, right down to the creaking fan with a devil's trap on the metal. She was wide awake and watching Dean with hate and fear in her eyes as he stood in the doorway awkwardly. Dean stepped into the cell slowly, not wanting to tick her off. He stayed close to the edge of the room, watching her and looking for signs of being more than human.

She was a petite girl, almost gaunt from being locked up for so long and her brown hair was oily and stringy. Her clothing was a simple halter top blue gown that draped around her ankles and revealed her shoulders. The dress was splattered with purple spots, especially around the leg and chest areas, but almost no area of the gown was untouched. Dean could easily see that it was her blood. She had been very pretty once, but now scars crisscrossed her arms and shoulders and there was a long scar that went down the side of her neck, near her jugular. Her nose had obviously been broken and it was bleeding freshly as she stared at him with deep brown eyes. Her wrists were latched down to the table with leather straps and from her uncomfortable position, her legs had to be lashed to the legs of the chair as well. The metal chains crisscrossed her chest and stomach, making it impossible for any part of her, other than her head, to move in any way.

Dean had just turned to shut the door when the girl made a rasping noise that sounded like a sentence. Dean shut the door and turned around to face her.

"What was that?" he asked genuinely.

The girl looked furious now, but repeated her words. "You... aren't... him..." she said, her voice rasping.

"Uh, yeah, I am, I'm Dean Winchester," Dean said with a nervous laugh.

The girl shook her head, then leaned her head to the right. Her face had seemed to soften after his words. "Can you give me water?" she asked in the same rasp. She didn't seem very threatening now.

Dean looked to the left and saw a bucket of water with a ladle in it. He walked carefully over to it and then back over to the girl. She had been watching him with something different from hate in her eyes. It was almost... relief.

Dean awkwardly filled the ladle and held it to the girl's mouth. She drank the ladle dry eagerly and took several deep breaths before nodding for more. Dean refilled the ladle and held it to her mouth again. She drank the second one down faster than the first one and Dean kept filling the ladle until she was breathing heavily and didn't open her mouth for more. Dean set the bucket and ladle down next to the chair and watched her while she caught her breath.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice growing in volume and strength as she spoke. "I haven't had that good of a drink since I got in here."

"Who put you in here?" Dean asked, pulling over a chair and sitting in it so he was at eye height with her.

The girl began laughing. Her laugh was cold and long and almost cruel. Unlike with Claire, Dean had no wish to join in this girl's laugh.

"You did, of course," she wheezed out through laughter, then began coughing roughly. Dean still watched her from the edge of the room. The woman recovered fairly quickly and eyed Dean carefully. "You came for answers, didn't you?"

Dean nodded, not wanting to say anything. The woman nodded and shifted a bit in her seat. "I know the cameras don't have audio. So I will tell you everything, but you have to promise me one thing."

Dean nodded carefully. "Of course."

The woman got an odd look on her face before she spoke. Dean could tell that he wasn't going to like her deal.

"In exchange for my spilling," the woman said. "You either get me out, or you shoot me."

Dean crossed his heart while lifting his right hand up. "Promise."

The woman shifted in her bonds and smiled at him. "Glad to hear we have a deal. And you need to let me out of these. I promise I'll stay in the chair, but I want out of the chains."

Dean headed over to the chair and searched for a lock.

"Their latched to the floor," the woman said loudly. "Hope you have bolt cutters."

Dean scowled and looked around the cell for a hammer. There was one on the table in the corner and he took it, began whaling on the floor chains and managed to free one set of them. Dean went to work with unwinding them and peeled away layer after layer of chains. With each layer, the woman seemed to relax even more. Dean pulled the last set of chains off with a small flourish and she stretched in her seat.

"Ah, that feels good," she said, grinning and closing her eyes. They flicked open and made eye contact with Dean. "Did you know that this is the most free I've been in three months?"

He shook his head and waited for her to start talking.

"Right to the business, are we," she said, a bit irritated, but she shrugged it off. "Alright, well, since you aren't him, I might as well tell you the basics. I'm Arcadia Hale, but... only some people call me Arc. I'm twenty seven years old and married some what happily to... well, I won't get into that now. I'm human as the day I was born and I was taken prisoner three months ago."

Dean waited for her to go on. Obviously picking up on that, Arcadia went on.

"I was taken prisoner in a raid on the stronghold I was being guarded in. My husband was a very high up in Lucifer's army and to get me was to get him in his weak spot, like every other guy," she said, a small smile on her face. "My guards were killed and here I am."

"Who was your husband?" Dean asked.

"If I told you, you would think I was crazy," Arcadia said with a small laugh.

"Try me," Dean replied, not taking his eyes from her's.

Arcadia looked away from him and bit her lip. "I-I can't."

"Do you want out of here?" Dean asked her, his volume rising. "Because if I don't get more info, I'm going to chain you right back-"

"Okay!" she yelled, cutting Dean off. She looked terrified at the prospect of telling him, but swallowed and spoke. However, she spoke so softly, Dean could hardly hear her.

"Speak up," Dean ordered, watching her with a concentrated expression.

"I said Lucifer!" she yelled at him, then shut her mouth sharply with a panicked look.