Neal was drifting in and out of sleep in his austere grey room with a bed that looked like a cot. He didn’t want to think about the scenes of that day, but they kept drifting into his sleeping eyes and kept insisting that he scream at them, silently, one more time.
He was alone, waking and sleeping. Even Acardi had learned silence and inaction and in his silent screaming, he was alone.
He woke to a scurrying in the vents. He groaned and rolled over. On top of all this, the compound had a vermin problem. The next moment, the scurrying seemed closer, like it was on the ground next to his bed, whatever it was.
And a hand closed over his mouth. He meant to yell, but the hand was clamped tight over his lips.
“No sounds,” the reedy voice whispered. “It’s very secret. You act like a guard, lead me down the hall. I am handcuffed. But I lead you. Then you’ll sleep better. You’ll see.” A scrawny girl handed Neal a pair of iron handcuffs, then turned away and offered him her hands. His hands were shaking as he closed the iron over her thin wrists, but what choice did he have?
Neal Grover only paused to pull on a pair of jeans and tuck in his white undershirt before following this strange girl down the hall, wherever she led him.
She made him push her along a couple times so it looked like he was leading her, but it didn’t matter. The halls were deserted. Neal didn’t know his way well enough even to know what sector he was in when the girl stopped abruptly in front of a door that looked exactly the same as all the others and passed him the handcuff key. He freed her wrists and she opened the door with another key from her pocket.
She slipped in, barely opening the door, forcing Neal to edge his way through awkwardly behind her.
The room was well lit and furnished with a round table and chairs whose occupants were of all shapes and sizes. Among them was Vanessa Acardi. A man with a beard that was barely more than stubble stood up and looked expectantly at Acardi. She nodded.
“He’s the one.” Neal tried to keep himself steel, but his eyes never obeyed. Now they were wide with alarm. The man nodded curtly at the scrawny girl who had brought Neal here.
“Good job, Norv, as always,” he complimented. Norv smiled crookedly.
“See. Rat’s are good for something.” She turned her smile sideways to Neal. “Aren’t they?” Neal was too confused to respond, and whether he would admit it or not, he was scared.
“What’s going on?” he snapped. The man’s figure commanded the room as he looked at Neal with direct, but not harsh, eyes.
“My name is Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann and this is the Resistance.”
