A/N: By the gods, I have returned! Two years and change since I published anything for Shades of Gunmetal, which is at least two years too long. Life has been crazy in those two years; lost a house in a friend's divorce (long story), spawned (I now have a legacy beyond a 20%-finished entry on a fan fiction website!), changed jobs twice, found a house, got life back in order. My apologies to any current readers still holding out hope that I would return for making you wait so long; with all of this in hand, it was hard to find time to write, and the idea of constructing my own Jigsaw test and the interactions that it begat gave me fits to the point I wanted to can the whole project. Infinite thanks to Celestial Glowhead for giving me the kick in the ass I needed to bang out an entire chapter in one sitting. Seriously, dude, you're a fucking lifesaver. People like you are the reason people like me do the things that we do.

I promise chapter six won't take two years to get here.

[Press Play: Otep – "Feral Game"]

The incessant cold, biting pressure on his chest dragged Dmitri Kovalyov from his drug-induced torpor, drawing himself clumsily to his feet. What kind of sick fucking joke was this? Krieg was going to answer for this treachery, preferably after getting pieces of that spider-fuck Kurzfeld shipped to him on ice.

A sharp pinch on the back of his neck drew his broad, long-fingered hands to the source of the offense – and as quickly as he had snapped to alertness, outrage, all tinged with the flaring darkness of panic, he stopped cold.

A length of chain had been cinched tightly across his shoulders like the neck-loop of an apron, terminating in...

Some kind of metal plate, strapped across his chest? What was this? Had they hoped he would suffocate under the pressure? The idiots would have to do better than that. No, this was something else, a gambit made to play with his mind. The weight of this ungainly chest plate would keep him off-balance, the just too-tight lengths of chain would restrict his movement just enough to deny his full range of movement, even if the riveted steel would protect him against most fatal injuries.

Where was he, even? The damp, musty room around him was dimly lit by a single caged lightbulb buried into a small recess in the wall, casting just enough light to reveal a pile of brutally crude implements piled in the center of the floor. Just opposite him, across the pile, lay Felix, his corpulent body shuddering faintly with each slow, labored breath.

Still unconscious. Good. The banker was a moron, he could wake up when it was time to escape, his patronizing rasp would only be an annoyance.

Find the door. It didn't take him long, even with his limbs so sluggish from the sedative that had been flushed through his body; it stood opposite the solitary source of light. A series of quick, jagged torch cuts protruded where the inner handle should have been; Dmitri pounded on the metal door furiously, preparing to round back for the sturdiest bludgeon he could find in the pile-

Why would they leave us weapons? Goddamned Ausseidiers made no sense. If they planned to use those tools to rough him and Felix up, it was sloppy to just dump them off in here without a guard present. Were they supposed to kill each other for someone else's entertainment?

No sense in waiting to find out. Dmitri seized a sledgehammer whose haft had been amputated halfway down its length, a crude weld attaching a cluster of railroad spikes to one end of the head like a maul. He'd have a lot of fun cracking heads with this little beauty; maybe he'd even keep it after the fact, as a little souvenir, a constant reminder of when he pulverized that treacherous German black-money mogul and all his men.

Felix stirred, a wheezy cough proclaiming his sluggish return to consciousness as he rolled languorously onto one side. "Where-"

"Shut up, you're out of your element." Dmitri had no time for the fat man anymore; it was tedious enough having to stock his brothel with labor that met the diseased greaseball's capricious tastes, but to have to deal with his constant wailing was more than the Russian felt he could stomach.

"Fuck you. Where are we?"

"I don't know, I said shut up, I need to think-" as Dmitri began to pace around the room, searching for any telling piece of evidence that would reveal the nature of their plight, he noticed something.

Tucked just beneath the light was a small silver box – no, not a box, a casette player. It was practically arcane, no one used these things anymore.

Not the Ausseidiers. They were too sophisticated for this particular kind of posturing. Nothing made sense.

Dmitri grasped the player with his free hand, running the pad of his thumb across the buttons until he felt the relief of the symbol for play and squeezing it into place with a click.

"Dmitri. You thought you could escape six years ago when you slipped past Interpol, didn't you?" The voice on the tape was harshly filtered beyond recognition, but something about the cadence of the words rang familiar...

"You should know better than anyone that the devil always comes for his due. Now it's time to pay up, in the only currency you haven't stuffed mattresses with. I'm giving you a choice: kill Felix, and walk free... or he kills you, and he makes it out the door. Don't try forcing your way out – that little contraption on your chest is holding a shaped charge against your ribs. C4, just enough to blow every organ out your back in alphabetical order. If you're both still standing two minutes from when this tape stops, the charges take both of you out. The key to remove the harness is attached to a dead man's switch on each other's body – pull the key, you blow the other guy to bits. Clock's ticking."

A bellow of fury welled in Dmitri's chest, and he lashed out, hurling the casette player across the room to splinter into its base materials against the reinforced door. He bellowed a dozen curses in blistering-fast Russian, striking the wall with his improvised maul before turning to face Felix.

"Oh... oh, fuck you, no way am I-"

"Shut. Up." Dmitri sprinted across the room, smashing his hammer against the points he guessed the hinges would be located, but to no avail. The steel didn't even deform beneath his blows. "I can get this open, I just need-"

The dissonant ring of metal scraping against metal sounded as Felix lumbered his way to the door, a sharpened prybar clutched in his sausage fingers. "Move, dammit! I'm getting this thing open!" He swept the prybar into a notch in the door, leveraging his considerable bulk to try and wedge the door open.

A rhythmic beeping sounded from both their chests, muffled by the steel plates. It had started late, but the timer really was counting down. Dmitri knew that sound all too well, had dabbled in mercenary work before he had realized where the true money sat waiting for the right hands to cultivate it.

"Give me that, I need to-" Dmitri snatched the prybar from Felix's clammy grasp, opting to drive its length in near the latch of the door like a chisel, driving his maul into the hooked end. Felix backed away slowly, useless as always. So much the better, he needed the space to work. They didn't have much time.

Frothing spittle flew from the Russian primarch's mouth as he pounded away at the door, feeling the prybar digging deep into its berth. He wasn't going to play this motherfucker's little game, not the way it was intended to be played; why give him the satisfaction? For all his innumerable flaws, Felix had proven an expert at moving money around; replacing him would be more difficult than just finding another rich, amoral creep who got off on the idea of pimping by proxy or fucking his property on his cut of the profits.

"We're out of time..." Felix wheezed, now directly behind his business partner. "I'm not dying like this. Not for you!"

The blow to the back of his head caught Dmitri unaware, a furious array of stars exploding into supernovas of pain as what felt all too like a baseball bat rebounded his forehead off the door. Staggering, bellowing like a gored bull, he hurled the prybar like a javelin, striking Felix across the leg as he sprang forward, nausea from what was sure to be a concussion later threatening to topple him as he collapsed on top of the bankster.

"You- fucking- idiot- I- had- it!" Every word was puncuated by a ruthless knee to the fat man's groin, the last delivering a sickly sastisfying pop! under the impact. "You think you mean shit to me? I was doing you a fucking favor!"

Felix groaned in agony, his arms shrinking up over his face as Dmitri poured out his vengeance, driving the maul into his former associate's armored chest with a wet, meaty crack.

"You think I can't replace you? You're nothing but a paycheck! I was going to replace you anyway – they've just forced my hand sooner!" As he drew back for a two-handed swing, Felix shifted his prodigious mass, taking Dmitri to the ground beneath him with a strength born of desperation, his hands encircling Kovalyov's throat and squeezing with all his might.

Already disoriented from the blow to the skull, Dmitri's vision swam, bleak, murky darkness threatening to close around him as he felt his lungs begin to burn. Felix's beady eyes narrowed in vicious triumph, digging his thumbs into the hollow beneath Dmitri's jaw for purchase despite the smaller man's thrashing limbs and the blows he managed to land with his maul.

He couldn't go out like this, strangled by this putrid bastard. He just had to-

The timers began to beep faster, their chiming pulse signifying that certain death was mere moments away. He needed-

There it was, secured against Felix's flank. The key! Steeling himself for one final strike, Dmitri lay limp, hoping his act would buy him even a fraction of a second's respite from the crushing pressure on his throat.

It did. The moment he stopped resisting, Felix slumped forward, ragged breath coming in hot, humid bursts. "I knew what you thought, you sick, sadistic-"

"Ne pizdi, you fuck!" Dmitri spat, lunging his head forward with all his might to crack his screaming skull against his assailant's nose as he grasped for the key. Felix recoiled like he had been stung as the cartilage snapped, spraying blood and spit in an exclamation of shock, his momentum impossible to stop as he floundered backward-

-and his weight being just enough to yank the pin, and its attached key, free from its slot. The beeping stopped as Felix flailed ineffectually on his back for a second before the explosive detonated, jerking his entire body like a ragdoll. Streaks of pulped viscera hurtled in all directions as he lurched from the ground, only to settle back in on top of his own gore a moment later.

Vision still swimming, breath coming in labored bursts, Dmitri rolled onto his stomach, fumbling along the chain for the lock from which the key promised relief – until he thought better of it. Both systems had shut down after Felix had been blown apart, and though it was uncomfortable, that steel plate could be the difference in surviving a bullet from one of Kurzfeld's men. Rising shakily to his feet, Dmitri spat onto the corpse of his freshly-deceased partner, steadying himself against the wall next to the door.

All he had to do was wait, and-

As if by some unseen cue, the latch to the door released, its weight and bearing on its hinges swinging it gratingly open into the corridor beyond. Still almost no light, but he could make out the silhouette of pipes and cabling along the wall. Where was he, some kind of dry sewer? A utility tunnel?

It was a clever hideout, the perfect place for a kill room tucked away beneath the sprawling urban blight aboveground. No one would hear the explosions, or would have heard gunshots, and even if they had, who would care? This section of the sprawl belonged to the 14K and Juarez.

Of course, that was assuming he was somewhere below his own operation, or near enough to it. For now, he had no idea – but that suited him well enough. The surface couldn't be far, there had to be an accessway nearby. He'd find it, he had to.

Dehydration was not going to be his death, not after what he had just been through-

Wait.

/\\

From a claustrophobic utility room nearby, Frank listened intently to the audio from the next room over, gingerly probing the stitch job Red had done on his shoulder. Even, tight, thorough. Seen Curtis do worse even back in the field hospital. The clinking of metal snapped his mind back to focus like a razor; one of them was up. Probably Dmitri, he was the one who cared about waking up.

So the vigilante leaned forward, thumb stroking the remote device for his detonator. All he had to do was find the tape, and it would be time to start this little exercise in morality.

Strange way to put it. He'd never have thought of doing something like this before, even if any number of his targets would have deserved it. Job satisfaction didn't really come from torture, it was just a means to an end – the end result, that actionable intel, the moment when some scum copped to all the heinous shit he did, that was where satisfaction came in.

Results.

This isn't about that. It was a statement that had looped through his bourbon-muddled consciousness with deliberate frequency since he'd come down to the test site, as if repetition would eventually make him accept the idea.

So far, it hadn't stuck. Everything he had seen earlier that night – everything he had seen six years ago, for months on end – stood and screamed in the face of what Amanda and the old man had said: that somehow, magically, facing down his own death would change one of the two walking, talking pieces of shit that he'd been tasked with fishing out of their bowl.

Dmitri had looked his own death in the eye plenty, and always come back swinging. Murder for hire and actively pissing off every major syndicate in Europe had a way of driving that particular affliction home. No, he was too determined to be what he was. There was no changing him.

Even if he did, what good would it do? He wasn't going to seal off his pipelines, wasn't going to turn any of his cash flow into arms and put the personal touch on shutting down his contacts. He was only ever going to be a shitbag crime boss lording it over his brothels, which meant there was only one way he could end up.

Dying bad, messy, probably slow. It was the best he could expect-

"How's he doing?"

"Goddamn it, Red, don't sneak up on me." He hadn't even heard her come in, whether he was too caught up in his own appraisal of the situation to notice or because she was unnaturally quiet when she wanted to be, he wasn't sure. As the tape he had recorded finished playing, Frank gestured to the audio monitor. "They're up, found the tape."

She had changed out of her bloodsoaked dress in favor of a shirt of identical color and some civilian knock-off of battle dress pants. No matter who she'd been a few hours ago, no matter how good she had been undercover – until she started the heartbreak song over the sick fucks he'd taken down as a matter of principle – it was a pretty solid reminder. She looked the part for this, it was what she had chosen, too.

But it's not baked in like Kovalyov. She still had a shot at being someone else. Right?

It was a risk, but something in the back of his head said it was the right play with all the same conviction as it said Kovalyov was about to die.

"Good. You gonna throw the switch?" She gestured to the electronic device in his hand, looking pointedly anywhere but directly at him. Everything about this had been a mistake.

Her mistake.

He wasn't ready yet, he'd gone off on the first idea that stuck in his head for more than a second and now... maybe Frank was right about Dmitri, that there was no fixing him, that there were people too far gone to save, but it didn't matter either way. He hadn't learned what he needed to, which meant that she had failed. Twice.

But here she was, hoping against the sound of failure screaming in her ears that her real mistake was doubt, that she'd done everything John had asked of her, that Castle had learned, that he wasn't just using this as an excuse to validate his own way of seeing the world.

Not hard to see it that way when you do what he does, she mused as he gave the detonator a squeeze. The digital clock began counting down, ticking away the seconds of uncertainty-

"Walk me through your setup." John's unannounced presence caused both apprentices to jump visibly, with Castle's hand seizing on the Colt laying next to the timer before he realized the origin of the voice.

"It's two test subjects – Dmitri and his bankroll, a guy named Felix-"

"Shaped explosive set to a timer. One of them kills the other to escape."

John said nothing, merely studying the faces of his first and his newest apprentices. Castle had taken the lead on this one, it wasn't surprising that he had chosen Dmitri Kovalyov. Getting to him was going to be problematic, but he had envisioned a number of different tests for the crime lord. This was much simpler than anything he had devised – but simple wasn't necessarily wrong, especially for an early test. Felix was the key, and in that, Castle had been correct to tie their fates together...

But the setting was wrong. Everything played to the strengths of his disease, his moral failings. He would learn nothing from this, put no value on any life without ever thinking of how he threw it away pursuing his enterprises. This was just another obstacle to overcome. A setback.

John said nothing, instead listening to the sounds of the altercation unfolding in the next room. The stakes had certainly been dire enough to put the two test subjects on edge; they had started out cooperating, but now they had devolved into looking for the easy out that Castle had left them. It did speak to their nature, how deeply rooted their dysfunction had become – and that they understood what they stood to lose. But did they see what they stood to gain?

"Why does one of them have to die?" he finally asked, peering at Frank through an inscrutable veil of dispassion.

Frank shrugged. "Kovalyov either lets himself die, or kills his business. He'll have nowhere to go if he lives, has to make another choice." As if he will.

"No." The word belied a cunning smirk of superiority that twitched at the corners of John's mouth. "One of them has to die because one of them wants to live more. Isn't that right, Amanda?"

Before she could answer, Dmitri's behemoth roar cut the conversation short. "You think I can't replace you?"

The sentence cut the air like a knife. In an instant, Frank knew what it meant – and John knew what he took it to mean. Dmitri hadn't learned, he already had a plan in motion to return to business as usual. Another instant, and Frank swept to his feet, scooping the sidearm from its resting place.

"You heard him. Test didn't do a goddamn thing." He shouldered past the other two occupants of the room, rounding the corner to the corridor that led to the inevitable concrete tomb for its inhabitants. Amanda wheeled about to follow him, face stricken with the pallor of fear even beneath the layers of concealer she had pasted on for their operation.

"Frank, wait!" Her boots sent reverberations bouncing through the tunnel as she scrambled to keep pace with his long, deliberate strides. "This isn't how-"

"You heard him plain as day, Red. Doing this didn't change shit." He half-racked the slide on his pistol to ensure a round was chambered – one always was, but the only time you don't check is the only time you need to – and waited a few paces beyond the door.

"That doesn't mean you fuck with the test! You don't get to decide-"

"Oh, goddamn, Red, I thought you got it! You saw what they do, you saw what they are! You gonna tell me he doesn't deserve this?"

Fuck. He was right. Of course he was right, because he went about it wrong. But now there was no way to change the outcome, to start over with a proper test for Dmitri. A dim corner of her brain became suddenly, acutely aware that she had been so wrapped up in the idea that Castle could succeed, that she wanted him to succeed, that she'd run with his first proposal without ever considering what was actually necessary to change Dmitri.

He needed more tests, the way they had done for a few special cases before. The deep-seated ones who truly believed that what was wrong about them was right, necessary, a part of them.

Are you talking about this bastard, or Frank?

Was this just his second test?

Could he fail one test and still have a chance at learning?

The possibilities were too much for her to put together in such a short span of time, and she needed answers that would take too long to make a difference now. Amanda slumped against the wall, cradling her head in her arms. No, everything was fucked, all because she had wanted one outcome over another, had wanted to move forward at any cost.

The muffled thump of the plastic explosive going off did nothing to disrupt her descent into the arcane snarl of anxiety that clawed at her mind. Frank squeezed the kill switch, disabling the other explosive.

Had she noticed, Amanda might have thought this was a good sign; even more so when he flipped the switch to disengage the electronic lock on the door. Swathed in darkness, it was all but impossible to see him unless he moved, like some kind of grim fucking reaper waiting for the final seconds on a clock to tick down.

/\\

Then Dmitri saw him. The figure standing just outside the door, far enough back he couldn't rush him but close enough that he couldn't possibly miss with the piece leveled in one steady hand at the door. Scrambling for cover, he yanked the door shut, his brain awhirl with the pieces of the puzzle he hadn't thought to put together.

This wasn't Otto Krieg. Either Kurzfeld was acting alone, or-

How did he know about the Interpol sting? He'd have to have been there.

Where had he seen that face before? The man who called himself Mattias, he looked familiar-

No.

No, no, no. No.

Mattias Kurzfeld was Fletcher, that American contact who had disappeared shortly after the raid. At the time, he had thought he had just grown some sense and gone underground, but now-

Kurzfeld was Fletcher was... Jigsaw.

There was no other explanation for this setup. This elaborate death trap. How had this Jigsaw killer even gotten into the brothel?

Kurzfeld was Fletcher was Jigsaw was...

No one could clear out all their guards unless they were the goddamn Baba Yaga.

No. There was someone else with that same level of skill.

Kurzfeld was Fletcher was Jigsaw was the Punisher.

Fuck. Fuck.

FUCK!

Frank Castle was supposed to be dead. His contacts in New York had said that the Italian families were putting old beefs aside to wipe him out, had been burning down his safe houses. He hadn't stayed perfectly abreast of the situation, figured the news would break when it did, but now...

"You got nowhere to go, Kovalyov. Might as well stand up and die instead of crawling like a worm."

"Fuck you! Come in here, I'll make it quick! Straight to the head!" His nerve was faltering, but he couldn't let Castle know that.

A solitary round winged off the door, sparking as it bored into the concrete floor near where Felix had been blown open, driving a fine mist of blood into the air.

Guess he'll die stupid, bad, messy, and quick. Frank palmed the detonator, lips silently forming the words that steeled him for every kill.

One batch, two batch.

He was making the world safe for people who could never see it that way. His thumb found the switch. A few pounds of pressure later, he slipped the device into a pocket, the rapid chiming setting loose a breath he didn't realize he had held.

Maria.

Another explosion, louder than the first, ripped through the air and rattled the door. Dmitri had never removed the C4.

He set off down the tunnel, making for the stairs he knew were in the next section. John was coming.

"What does he learn if he's dead, Frank?"

The question went unanswered as the vigilante departed, leaving John nearly slack-jawed at what had unfolded. He knew there was a long way to go with Castle, but this- this was...

Amanda hadn't raised her head since she realized what was coming. John slid down the wall stiffly, coming to rest just beside her.

"He wasn't ready, was he?" She shook her head in response, all too aware of the tiny crimson crescents she had dug into her palms. For a long moment, silence rang between them, punctuated only by the low register of water pushing through the pipes overhead, just at the edge of hearing. When at last she spoke, her voice shook, but managed to hold.

"It wasn't him. Everything about this was wrong."

Of course it was.

"You knew better than to let this happen, Amanda. You saw what he was planning. How he envisioned it happening."

Something about that statement lit a fire in her eyes; she shoved off of the wall, uncurling as she stood. "He was right, though. You didn't see that place, you don't know what these guys were doing-"

"And you've seen it far too closely. You left your old life behind, why let it force the control out of your hands?" Somehow, the question carried no judgment.

Somehow, that was worse.

"It's not about me. This shit, he sees it every day. It's the only way he knows how to change any of it. Fix any of it."

"You sound like you agree."

"I don't know right now. I don't know! All I know is – Dmitri's dead. Felix Rell is dead. Castle cleaned house on everyone they were with. Everyone's gonna think twice before they set up shop again."

"You'd rather he just murder them? All of them, without a chance to heal? To see?"

It was a question she didn't have an answer to.

There were too many of those, lately.

/\\

Rounds chewed through the dilapidated drywall of the crackhouse as Frank bounded into cover, wincing as he felt one of the stitches in his shoulder tear. He hadn't had a destination in mind after leaving the sewer, just knew he had to get out.

He'd blown his cover. There was no way he hadn't. Single shooter clears out an entire brothel. No one else with the skill to do it would have gotten involved; maybe, maybe that fixer Micro had put him in contact with in Chicago on the way out. He'd handled those South Club goons with a grace and speed that reminded Frank of Romanov.

Three bangers. Ten, two, two but downrange. Shoulder's fucked.

Shifting his grip slightly, Frank shouldered his carbine against his good shoulder, peering over the lip of the pockmarked couch he had crossed to after the initial volley. Whoever these guys were, they had never been in a real gunfight before; probably slung a volley of fire or two when they brushed up against a rival gang, but they didn't know how to put rounds on target.

He did. Snapping from cover, he discharged a pair of rounds toward the first combatant, the high velocity of his rifle rounds making quick work of his cover and dropping him with a tight grouping of oozing holes in his chest. A quarter second longer, and he came to bear on the second, who was starting to draw a bead; one squeeze of the trigger, and his face shattered from the impact of a round through the bridge of the nose. Sidestepping along the length of the couch, eyes fixed on his third target, who had tried to shrink behind a refrigerator when he heard the vigilante's rifle make its screaming promise of death.

Frank seized the opportunity, covering the gap in a few bounding strides as he shifted his grip yet again, delivering a powerful blow with the stock of his rifle straight to the last man's windpipe, crushing his larynx. The building had fallen silent quickly, save for a few involuntary screams from its coked-out denizens.

They weren't the threat, laid out and balancing their highs with their downer of choice. Besides, pissing yourself with fear was a good way to realize you needed rehab.

Fear of death makes you appreciate life. Huh.

He really had been doing it all along.