"That's right--you arrived just before the military takeover, didn't you?" Soma settled back on her heels. "It's a little complicated. The soldiers are a new development. For weeks before you came, this entire place was set up to look like a mental hospital. They told us we were deluded, and that we weren't the people we thought we were. We weren't prisoners as much as we were patients.

"The monsters still came at night. But once a week, we'd have visits with doctors who tried to convince us we were those fake selves. That was all right, though, since they expected us to be uncooperative and we usually obliged them."

She frowned a little at the memory. "That's not as bad as the visitors, though. They're...people you know from back home. Always someone close to you. Nobody can tell if it's really them or just a perfect copy--but they act like they know you from your fake life, and they tell you they want you to get better..."

Soma stopped for a moment and looked at the ground. It had been so tempting to just give in, that day the colonel had visited. She wasn't sure she could go through it again today.