OK, this chapter is on the shorter side, but it has a lot of important things in it. I really hope it lives up to the last chapter! This starts off with Race, but we get some of Snyder's perspective near the end. You also meet a very important character in this chapter!

So at the beginning of the last chapter, I asked for three reviews. I wasn't sure I'd even get that - I've never gotten more than two reviews on a chapter before. But you guys blew me away! Thank you so much for SIX REVIEWS(!), and in just 24 hours! You guys are amazing!

I know this might be super ambitious, but… can we go for 10 reviews on this chapter? It would make my day! Please leave a review if you loved this, despised this, or had mixed emotions. I really want to hear your thoughts, praises, and critiques!

Destiel0502: Thank you for being my first review! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you like this chapter. Thanks so much for the encouragement!

Fanz4life: Oh my goodness, I can't believe you actually left a review on my piece! You have prestige in the Newsies Fanfiction community, you know! Thank you so much! Snyder's perspective is interesting, isn't it? I like the Les Mis comparison! Different perspectives are fun to work with. And, haha, it wasn't intentionally a Hamilton reference, but kudos to you for catching that!

BroadwayIsMyPurpouseInLife: Thank you so much! I hope you enjoy this chapter. I hope it manages to stand up as well as the last one!

Julianne: Thanks so much! Thank you for the encouragement! I hope you find this chapter exciting, too. :) Thank you for reading and reviewing! (I love your name, too, by the way! It's so pretty!)

Guest: Thank you so much! Here's the update you've been waiting for. I hope it's as good as the last one. Anyways, enjoy!

And finally:

SomedayonBroadway: What do I say? Your review literally made me tear up the morning I read it! Your asking for a bit of Snyder's perspective really flipped a lightbulb on for me. I love writing about Snyder's reasons. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as you did the last one… Thank you for the encouragement. You've inspired me to write fanfiction. Keep being amazing!

Wow, long author's note. Okay! Here we go!

Race didn't remember being thrown into the Refuge; all he knew was that, when he managed to crack open his eyes to be met with a pounding headache, he didn't recognize the room he was in at all. It was dark and gray and cold, and the enormous room, crowded to overflowing with rickety wooden bunk beds, was so cavernous that Race felt like it was swallowing him whole.

Race shivered as he somehow found the strength to slowly slide his eyes open. It was freezing. He was lying on the cold cement ground, and the breeze forcing its way in through the bars on the open windows seemed so much colder than it had that morning. Just hours before.

There was a lot, in that moment, that Race didn't understand. He didn't understand where he was or why he was there. He didn't understand where everybody else was, why such a large room was so totally deserted. The only thing that reached his brain was the cold. The frigid cold. Why had the temperature dropped so much since the early morning? Race let out a slight groan as he moved to push himself up on his elbows, forcing his body up, with the intention of standing up and looking around, maybe figuring out where everybody was.

He had made it - painfully - to his knees when there was suddenly the sound of heavy footsteps outside the door he was lying next to. Without more than a second to think it over, Race threw himself back to the ground, lying still and silent as a key rattled roughly in the lock on the door, and, finally, the heavy wooden apparatus creaked open.

Race didn't turn his head or crack open his eyes to see who walked in, but he could tell as soon as one of them started talking. He knew their voices like the back of his hand; any newsboy would. And Race cursed internally. The Delancey brothers were rough and cruel, and they weren't likely to let him get through this encounter unscathed.

Breathe, Race coached himself desperately. And whatever you do, don't let them see that you're awake. It was better, by far, to pretend to be still unconscious - or at least addled. Oscar and Morris would mock him, yes, but their physical abuses would probably be less severe than if he was awake and backtalking them.

"If he ain't awake by now…" Morris's low murmur reached Race's ears, and Race had to hold himself tightly to make sure he didn't flinch and give himself away. Luckily, by the sound of their voices, neither of them seemed to know that he was awake - yet. Race just needed to make sure it stayed that way.

That became suddenly harder, though, when Race felt the hard toe of a boot in his stomach, not kicking him, but pushing his chest so he was forced to roll over onto his back. Race kept his body as limp as he could, forcing his face to remain blank and his eyes to remain shut for as long as he could. Preferably until they went away.

"Jesus," the other boy - Oscar - growled weakly. "What'd they do to this kid? Why ain't he woken up yet?"

Morris made a noncommittal noise. "'E's got a pretty good black eye. Coulda rattled his brain up a little. And Snyder did a number on him when 'e first got 'im in here."

That sentence bounced around Race's brain for a while. Snyder had beaten him, had he, when Race just arrived? While he was still unconscious? Well, then, that explained the fire shooting up and down his ribs, sparked higher when Morris had rolled him over. The pain was by far more intense now, rampaging through his chest, but he gritted his teeth, trying not to let it show on his face.

"Dirty bastard." Oscar's comment made Race's blood boil. "Always stealing, Snyder says. Ain't got an ounce of honesty in him."

"We always paid for our food, even when we were fresh off the boat." Morris's voice was layered with frustration and indignation, and Race yearned to be able to tell them the same thing he longed to tell Snyder, how he only stole from those who deserved it, how he paid everyone who needed the money. But he couldn't give himself away. He was so close. Already the Delanceys weren't paying that much attention to him.

"We'll come back in half an hour," Morris decided, addressed to his brother, "and if he ain't awake by then, well, we'll take him to Snyder just the same. Drag 'im down the hall if we have to."

Oscar groaned at the idea but murmured his assent just the same. Then he turned to Oscar. "Can't we have a little fun with him? Just now? Before he wakes up?"

Race could hear Morris let out a heavy breath through his nose, noncommittally. Finally he just said, "Sure. Whatever. We've got him to ourselves, haven't we?" And Race almost gasped aloud in fright before he remembered himself.

Have a little fun with him. There was no question at all in Race's mind what they were about to do. The only thing he wasn't sure about was whether he could keep himself composed and limp and seemingly unconscious while they beat him.

And suddenly his ribs exploded with agonizing pain, and it took all of Race's willpower to keep in a scream. He felt his entire body being thrown against the hard wood of one of the bunk bed's legs, but in that moment, he couldn't muster up the consciousness to do anything about it. He heard Morris and Oscar laugh cruelly, and Race could do nothing but swallow hard, breathe through his nose, and not let it show.

"Good one." Race almost exploded with fury at Morris's comment. He swore he was this close to tearing himself from the floor, charging at them, pinning Morris against the wall and throttling him until the older boy was choking and gasping for breath. It took everything he could possibly do to hold still.

"Here, watch this." There was another breath, another chuckle, and suddenly Race's left temple exploded with pain. He couldn't help himself; he let out a short, clipped, choked cry. Luckily, Oscar and Morris were laughing too loudly to hear him; that, or they assumed the cry came from his unconscious.

Without warning, there was another harsh blow; and then, quickly, more and more. Race was struggling now not to scream, and worst of all, he felt dangerously close to actually blacking out. And just right when he thought he couldn't take any more of it, the blows stopped.

"We'll leave 'im alone for now," Morris decided. "Come back in half an hour or so."

Oscar murmured his assent, and Race felt his heart flutter with relief in his chest. Finally - finally - they were leaving him in peace.

The wooden door clanged open and then shut, and the keys jangled in the lock. When they were clearly far away, and only then, Race allowed himself to breathe.

For a long time, all Race could process was the pain. There was so much; it was so overwhelming. It flooded into his mind, filling his brain to the brim with white-hot agony, making him grit his teeth to hold back yells and screams. He couldn't think beyond it, couldn't comprehend anything else.

It was only after a good ten minutes that Race began to notice something else, something past the pain. And yet again, it was the cold. The frigid cold that seeped into the room and bit at his skin. And Race didn't think he could take any more of it. He needed to get warm.

You're in a room with bunk beds, Race, a voice in his head whispered softly. There's got to be a blanket or two somewhere around here.

Race turned this over in his mind and decided it made some sense. And so slowly, painfully, he began the agonizing process of dragging himself to his feet.

It took nearly two minutes, far too long to stand up under normal conditions. But these weren't normal conditions, Race struggled to remind himself. He was in the Refuge - the Refuge; that still hadn't quite sunk in yet - and he was tottering on the edge of unconsciousness and burning with pain. The fact he managed to stand at all was a miracle.

When he was on his feet, he did, admittedly, still have to cling to the bedpost for support. He was shaking and his knees were already threatening to buckle. He had to sit down, fast.

Race glanced hurriedly around the room, his eyes probing the heavy wooden beds for any sign of blankets. He saw a few, all crumpled on tattered mattresses on the other side of the room. Just as he was sighing, preparing to make the long, agonizing trek over there, his eyes alighted on something else.

Race had thought the room was deserted. But, clearly, it wasn't. There was someone - and a very small someone, at that - curled up on a bed just ten feet away from Race. The figure wasn't moving, and his chest was only rising and falling very, very slightly. He looked to be sleeping, but not truly resting, not well. Every now and then, he would toss and turn, lightly whimpering. As Race's eyes strained in the semi-darkness, he could see the beads of sweat standing out on the boy's small forehead.

Race suddenly felt his heart pang for the little boy, and at once he just wanted to be over there with him. So, with sharp, fiery pains digging into him with every step, he dragged his way over towards the boy.

By the time he got there, Race was stumbling, only staying on his feet by the clinging grip his fingernails had on the bedposts. He was shaking badly; and the second he reached the boy's bed, he collapsed on it, letting out a short, clipped cry.

The boy didn't move, didn't roll over, didn't make a sound, even as the entire bedframe was jostled as Race fell. His breathing was harsh and uneven, and even in his sleep he was gasping to get enough air. His face was flushed, but when Race laid a gentle hand on his cheek, he found it ice-cold. And Race couldn't understand why the boy wasn't smothered in all the blankets in the room.

Suddenly, absently, Race found himself running a hand through the little boy's hair, who only made a tiny whimpering noise in response. Race's heart twinged at how weak the boy sounded, how hopeless. How he sounded like he'd already given up.

And suddenly Race was angry that somebody had left this precious little boy on his own, locked in a room with nobody to check on him, with no blankets, and nobody to hear him if he screamed or cried out or choked.

Almost as if they wouldn't mind if he died.

Race seriously contemplated stumbling to the other end of the room to fetch a blanket, but he couldn't find it in himself to move. And yet the boy on the bed was shivering, his tiny teeth clacking together with cold. And Race himself was frigid, his arms coated in goosebumps. So he did the only thing he could possibly think to do: he slowly, painfully lay down next to the shaking boy and took him into his arms, huddling with him for the tiny amount of warmth that their two bodies provided. The boy struggled in his sleep for a minute, frightened by the strong arms that wrapped tightly around him, but after Race shushed him with a nearly-silent whisper in his ear, the boy relaxed and melted into Race's embrace. And Race, overwhelmed with pain and exhaustion and cold, couldn't help but drift into sleep right next to him.

"See?" Oscar Delancey stood in the doorway of the room, staring at the scene in front of him. "I told you he was just pretending to be asleep earlier."

Morris, the slightly older of the pair, sighed and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he hissed in a choppy undertone. "But so what? Now we've got another excuse to be mad at him."

Oscar huffed, but didn't respond. Too quickly, though, he slammed the door shut and strode quickly across the room to where their captive was huddled on a the lower bunk of a hard wooden bed, cradling that other infernal little boy to his chest.

"Wake him up." Oscar jumped slightly at his older brother's short command, but, rolling his eyes slightly, he did as asked. Reaching down to grab a fistful of the boy's curly blond hair, he forced Race's face up and delivered a swift slap to the boy's cheek.

Race gasped, and his eyes shot open as his already-bruised skin alighted with pain again. His eyes narrowed as he saw the faces leering down at him, and through his dazed brain, he managed to choke out, "You."

Morris may have been frustrated with his younger brother, but that certainly didn't mean he didn't still constantly protect him. And so he matched Race's glare. "Yes. Us, Higgins. You think we don't know you were faking back then?"

Morris's smile widened as Race's eyes did, and as guilty shock flitted across his face. Jackpot. He wanted to gloat, wanted to rub it in; but that wasn't what he was here to do. So instead, Morris just smirked and grabbed the boy's collar.

"Come on. Get up, Higgins. Snyder wants to see you."

Race's eyes filled with terror, and Oscar and Morris could see it quite well. He was barely even trying to disguise it. It made both of them laugh. They knew what Race had done, knew why Snyder wanted to punish him, and both of them were eager to see him get what he deserved.

Race didn't move, and Oscar suddenly lost his patience. "Get up!" he demanded, reaching out and dragging Race by the collar out of the bed, so he landed hard against the concrete floor. Race gasped, trying to hold in his cries of pain.

But then he saw Morris reaching over the bed, over the boy who still lay there. "Don't touch him," Race gasped, struggling to get back to his feet; Oscar just kicked him hard and pinned him to the ground with a foot on his chest. Race struggled, crying out for the little boy on the bed, screaming as he saw Morris's palm flash in the air and heard it connect with the skin of the little boy's cheek.

"Leave him alone!" Race's scream rent the air. He didn't even know why he cared so much. He'd just met the boy; he hadn't even talked to him. Race didn't know his name, how old he was, or why he was stuck in the Refuge.

I do know he shouldn't be here, though. I do know it's not fair. I do know he deserves better. The mantra ran through Race's ears. And he knew then, suddenly, exactly why he had to protect the boy as much as he could. The younger kid didn't deserve any of this. He was sick, on the cusp of death; Race recognized the symptoms of what the boy was going through when he saw them. The quickened breaths, the flushed face, the clammy skin, the coughing, the fatigue; pneumonia had claimed five lives at the Lodging House the past winter, and Race was determined that, as long as he could fight for the boy, that little kid wouldn't become the sixth.

And so he yelled.

"If you touch him, you'll pay!" Race screamed, still kicking, still lashing out under Morris's foot. "If you touch him, you'll be sorry!"

The Delancey brothers both just laughed. Oscar was on the edge of hysterics. This boy - this weakened, beaten, bloody, delirious boy - was lying on the ground, pinned to the floor under his brother's foot and unable to get out, and was telling them they'd be sorry? He was going to hurt them? This boy, who'd stolen, lied, deceived, trespassed, and robbed, was acting all righteous, and threatening them? It was too funny.

It took Morris's firm hand on his shoulder for Oscar's laughter to cease. Taking one glance at the glint in his brother's eyes, Oscar suddenly knew it was time to be serious, knew that sometime very soon, this boy was going to be punished for everything he'd done wrong.

"Come on."

Suddenly Morris seized Race's collar and hauled him to his feet, dragging him roughly out of the room. Oscar followed, locking the door behind him. And just like that, the trio was gone, leaving a deserted room, save for a tiny ten-year-old with jet black hair shivering and coughing on a hard bunk bed.

Snyder was eager. No, more than eager. He was excited. Open on his hard wooden desk was Race's file, a manila folder he'd kept carefully stocked for nearly a decade. It contained a list of fifty-seven crimes he'd seen the boy commit in the last ten years. It was mostly petty thievery - an apple snitched from a cart here, a crust of bread taken from a bakery there - but there were more major charges, too. Charges for assault and for fighting, for aiding and abetting a major robbery, for stealing nearly $25 worth of blankets from a store run by a recent Irish immigrant who needed every penny. True, that had been two years ago; true, some of the crimes were close to a decade old. But Snyder was still determined to punish the boy for everything he'd done. To prove to him, once and for all, that stealing was not and never would be acceptable.

The boy's eyes were clouded when Oscar and Morris shoved him into the room. He stumbled, struggling to catch his balance. Even so, he swayed on his feet. But he fixed Snyder with a piercing glare, and Snyder was sure the boy was conscious.

Beneath the layers of hatred in the boy's blue eyes, Snyder could clearly see the emotion he longed for the most. He could clearly see the pure terror. And it pleased him. It pleased him greatly.

"Please, Mr. Higgins." Snyder rose, placing his hands on his desk. "Sit down." He gestured towards a hard-backed wooden chair set up for the occasion. Race's eyes found the chair, and, without breaking his eye contact with Snyder, moved to sit down.

"Mr. Higgins," Snyder breathed again, and Race flinched, wishing he'd stop saying his name like that. It reeked of superiority, and it made Race's skin crawl. It was horrible.

"Do you know what this is?" Snyder gestured towards the file folder open on his desk. Race didn't react. He just kept his gaze fixed on Snyder's eyes. Very quickly, the older man started to get impatient. Defiance was one thing, and he'd expected that; but the way Race was just blatantly ignoring him was beginning to get under his skin.

"Answer me, boy." The words were low, soft. Snyder saw Race wince very slightly at his voice - at least there was that - but still, he didn't respond. Snyder rolled his eyes.

"You have three seconds, boy. This is a yes or no question. Very simple. Do you know what this folder is?"

Race fully intended to hold his tongue, to keep his silence. Let Snyder slap him. He'd show the older man that he couldn't be intimidated that easily. That would send a message.

His eyes widened, though, as Snyder casually glanced at his pocketwatch. His other hands counted down the seconds. Three - Two - . And as he held up two fingers, Snyder reached down, picking up a pair of brass knuckles. Race's eyes widened in horror - he didn't think he could take another beating that brutal, not so soon - and just as Snyder held up one finger and slipped the knuckles onto his own hand, Race gasped, closed his eyes, shied away, and choked out, "No, sir."

A tiny smile spread on Snyder's lips as he saw the boy's cheeks flush with shame. Here, at least, was a start. Some sight of fear. Here was the first time Race had willingly submitted to an adult, without being beaten for it first. Sure, he'd been intimidated, and that was what made him speak. But he was finally responding, learning how to answer to authority. It was a start.

"This is your file, boy." Snyder spat the word like it was poison. "Every single crime I've seen you commit since you were an illiterate four-year-old who didn't speak a word of English. No doubt there are thousands more. And you're going to pay for every last one of them."

Race's eyes flashed dangerously, and suddenly he didn't care about the brass knuckles on Snyder's desk, or the way his cheek burned, or the way Snyder was glaring at him like he was a shark's trapped prey. Suddenly all that mattered was that little boy lying on the bed and what an injustice that was. What a crime that was.

"Oh, so you'se tellin' me you ain't ever broken the law," Race spat, eyes glittering. He saw Snyder's black eyes narrow dangerously, but he didn't care. "As if this entire operation ain't a crime. As if - "

And then, suddenly, again, yet another heavy slap, the same place as the last two, right over an already-forming bruise. Race bit down hard on his lip, drawing blood, but he didn't cry out. And, undeterred, he found it in himself to continue.

"There's a kid, can't be more than ten or eleven, lyin' alone in that room, shiverin', without a single blanket to keep him warm. He's coughin', and he's gonna die soon if you don't do something. And you'se tellin' me you think you're the good guy?"

And just like that, a wave of guilt flooded through Snyder. He tried to fight it back, tried to tell himself that it wasn't true, that the boy was just trying to make him feel bad. But… it was true. The boy was ten, and a very young ten at that. Snyder had seen the way his body shook with each hacking cough, seen the way he shivered. And yet he'd tossed him in that room anyways. Yes, the boy had stolen. Snyder had caught him after he'd beaten up a bakery owner with a baseball bat to snatch a few loaves of bread. But the kid didn't deserve to die for that… did he? The Refuge was supposed to make model citizens out of the delinquent kids, not kill them. That's what he'd told the governor all those years ago. And here he was, about to be a murderer.

But all the same… he couldn't let Race see that indecision, that guilt, despite the fact that it was hammering in his mind. The boy thought that he, Race, was right. And admittedly, at this point, he might have been. But telling him so would only inflate his big head. It would only tell him, reassure him that yes, he could cross Snyder. Yes, he could count on the warden of the Refuge to let him off easy. Yes, he could steal. Yes, he could be just as insubordinate as he'd been, maybe more.

And he couldn't let the other boys in the Refuge see that he cared about that small kid either. So Snyder didn't know what on earth he could do. His mouth twisted slightly; the only good way out was to let that ten-year-old fight his own battles, pull through with his life if he could do it himself. And not to get involved in matters of small children struggling to take their medicine, suffer their punishment, do their time.

So he sneered at Race. "That kid, as you call him, robbed a bakery. He took a baseball bat and beat the shopowner bloody. That baker has seven children and his wife just died. That little boy stole unabashedly, taking the money the baker had rightfully earned. Money that should go to those seven little children."

"Maybe he has seven little siblings!" Race protested. "Who are you to judge him? He's doin' what he has to in order ta survive, and ya can't fault him for that! You - "

And suddenly there was a shot of pain in Race's unbruised eye, and a punch to his gut. Doubling over and crying out, Race toppled out of the chair and hit the ground with a thud. Suddenly there were more blows, more hits, more pain. Race heard a voice screaming, and in some distant part of his brain he realized it was him. More and more and more agony and then -

Silence.

Blackness.

Nothingness.

Snyder stood over the boy, who'd passed out about two minutes ago, sweat dripping from his face. Sreathing heavily, Snyder dropped his hands, slid the brass knuckles from his right fist. The boy had been screaming, shouting, yelling for him to stop. And Snyder kept telling him that this was punishment for a decade of misdeeds, this was what would happen again if he didn't change for good.

It felt good to see the boy finally pay for everything he'd done wrong. It felt so good to hear the boy scream and think, This is for the time you stole the apple from Mr. Kreutzer when you were eleven. This is for the time you took a muffin from Sam's when you were twelve, even though I saw you counting your money right after, saw that you had plenty enough to pay. This is for the time you hit Oscar in the face when he was thirteen, when he was running an errand for me. Snyder couldn't deny that it felt wonderful.

And, to be clear, he had no qualms about hurting Race, no qualms about punishing him for every crime.

But… why did he still feel guilty?

It wasn't because of Race. Snyder knew that much. But a face kept popping up in his mind, an innocent ten-year-old with jet black hair, smirking, giggling. The thing was, Race was right about him stealing to feed his family. Snyder knew the boy had at least three little sisters. And, in all honesty, he probably really didn't deserve the Refuge.

But if I go soft on him, it'll ruin everything I've worked for, everything the Refuge represents.

Ignoring the sight of the fifteen-year-old lying still, whose blood was soaking into his carpet, Snyder dropped into his chair and clutched his head in his hands.

He had to let the little boy fight for himself. He had to abandon him to the torture of the Refuge.

It was the only way he could retain his authority, the only way he could stay in control. He knew that.

So why did it still feel wrong?

All right! How was that? I hope you enjoyed it. Again, please leave me a review whether you liked it or not. Tell me what went well or what didn't work. I'm always looking to grow as a writer!

Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed; see you next time!