“What the hell is going on?” I said, voice no longer hoarse but demanding. “Where’s Mia and her baby? And why am I locked in a cage?”
“Yes, yes, I understand you have many questions.” The woman tapped the clipboard with her pen, clicked it, and peered up at me. “I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability, but I need to ask you some of my own first. Please be honest. Being caught in a lie results in automatic banishment, and sometimes, in extreme cases, death.”
I stood. My legs were still weak, but I didn’t let that stop me from marching to the door and slapping my hands against the bars. “Fuck that! You answer my questions!”
The woman shuffled backward, eyes wide. Her shoulders slouched like she was trying to turn inward on herself to escape, reminding me of the monster who had taken on my mother’s likeness in the tunnel. A sudden flash of pity stole through me. I was angry, yes, but I wasn’t like this. I prided myself on the ability to keep calm in the roughest of situations, and if this wasn’t a rough situation, then I didn’t know what was.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. Just answer the one: Are Mia and the baby okay?”
“Y-yes, they are in stable condition for now. But for the time being, they remain in quarantine.” I opened my mouth—more questions—but she talked over me. “Don’t worry, they are receiving the best care we can provide.”
My tensed muscles relaxed a bit.
“May I ask you my questions now?”
I turned and raised my arms, rested my palms on the back of my head, and peered up at the concrete ceiling. There was a dark stain up there that looked like Jesus. “Yeah, go ahead.”
“Your name?”
“Grady Miller.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Height?”
“Geesh, I don’t know, close to six feet. With shoes, I guess I’m—”
“This isn’t an application for a dating app, Mr. Miller. I need your best estimate.”
“Six feet.”
“Weight—”
“A buck ninety before all this. Now? Probably one-seventy, one-seventy-five. Do you need my social security number and mother’s maiden name too?”
She smiled again. “No. Have you been in contact with any of the entities outside?”
“Entities? That’s what you call them? That’s very…proper. But no. If I had, I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with you, would I?”
“Not always the case. Our studies show that—”
Footsteps echoed down the dark corridor, cutting her off. She spun around, the clipboard clutched against her chest, and stiffened—in fear, it seemed.
A small figure emerged from the shadows. This man had the face of a fifty-year-old, a few wrinkles, but the white hair and salt-and-pepper beard (mostly salt) of a man much older. His skin had an olive tint.
“Now, now, don’t go spilling all of our secrets, Dr. Hart.”
Hadn’t Ramsey mentioned a woman named Dr. Hart? Something about bright green eyes…yeah, I remembered him saying that, and her eyes were the greenest I’d ever seen.
The woman, Dr. Hart, sidled away, and the man advanced before stopping inches away from the bars. I thought of asking him what the iron smelled like but thought better of it. He studied me like I was an alien specimen. He then turned to Dr. Hart and grabbed the clipboard from her limp hands. Squinting, he read what she had written before he interrupted our little powwow.
“Grady Miller.”
“Yeah,” I said. The man’s face was punchable, and judging by the crookedness of his nose, he was no stranger to a swinging fist. I fought my anger back down to a manageable level and met his dark eyes without flinching. “Are you the one that needs my social and mother’s maiden name?”
He chuckled without humor, the sound almost robotic in its delivery. “That’s quite a good one, Mr. Miller. Were you a comedian before all of this? We could certainly use some entertainment around here.”
“I’m afraid I’m not much in that department. My friend Stone, though—he was voted the funniest boy in our eighth grade class back in the day.” I raised my eyebrows. “Is that why I’m locked up, because you’re gonna force me to be the town fool?”
The man shook his head slowly. “No, we have plenty of those already. But I assure you, this is just precautionary. We’ll get to that later. For now”—he stuck his right hand through the bars—“I believe a proper introduction is in order.”
I stared at his hand the same way he had stared at me. When he saw I wasn’t taking him up on his offer, he withdrew it.
“All right… Well, I’m John Berretti, the man in charge around here. MIC for short.”
Berretti.
I knew that name. Ramsey had warned me about this guy, and he was the reason the men who'd rescued us from the snow almost left me behind. Now I guessed he wanted me to thank him, and I might’ve had I not been locked in a cage. It’s hard to be polite when you’re held against your will, half-naked and suffering from frostbite.
“Well, I’m not being totally honest here, am I, Dr. Hart?” Berretti said.
Doctor Hart shrugged, never meeting Berretti’s eyes.
“I guess you could call me one of the men in charge here.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “Now let me out so I can go see my friend.”
Berretti’s smile faltered and fell into a frown. “Unfortunately, I can’t do that yet, Mr. Miller. We still have to run a few tests on you for confirmation.”
“With my permission, right?”
“Yes…and no.”
“And if I don’t want to do your tests?”
“Then, I’m sorry to say, you’ll be banished, Mr. Miller. We had an…incident here about a month ago that has caused us to up our safety protocols.”
I smirked. “Yeah, I heard about that. You were the one keeping the monster in a cage,
