Keman had known that asking nicely for his freedom probably wouldn’t yield anything positive, but it had been worth a shot. It had been completely useless, of course; the woman hadn’t even paused in what she was doing. She’d just shrugged it off. Now there was a tube going into his arm, and she was attaching something to it that made his insides run cold. Even with his eyes still adjusting to the light, he couldn’t seem to look away from whatever was swirling in the bag. It was dripping into the tube and…oh no, he could feel it in his arm. Dripping and cold and foreign.

The woman was still going on insanely about ‘roles’ and ‘scenes.’ Like all of this was one big theatre to her. What did that have anything to do with this? Plays and playacting were something Keman knew about only second-hand, and now…she was leaving.

“Where are you going?!” he shouted. “Come back!”

Suddenly, being alone in the thrumming room with that substance dripping slowly into his arm was a much more frightening prospect than having another person in the room (even if that person was a madwoman). All he could do was watch and wait and wonder what was going to happen to him.