I breathe deeply and say, "I've been taken here against my will. I've been walled off from my homeland. I've been suffering depression all the while. I escaped. I tried to speak out, but I failed. I would have slipped away, had you not stepped in."

"Good, good," the hand says. "Now, who are you? We haven't introduced ourselves."

I think about whether I should tell him, but decide that it wouldn't hurt to share such information. "My name is [*763]," I say. "And you?"

"Josh," the hand says.

That name rests uneasily in my mind. It feels out of the ordinary for a thing of evil to have a name. However, as I got the notion of earlier, maybe this one is different.

I say, "So what are you going to do with me, now that you know so much about me?"

"There's a lot that we want to learn," Josh says, "but we can make a start today."

- More Wars, Bloodier Wars, 2024.2.14.E