Today

Chapter XVIII

My first thought is: they got her too.

And then my common sense overcomes my foolish hope.

Because the man's hand on her arm isn't the tight grip of a captor. It is the gentle touch of an escort.

And the look on her face is not the panic of a prisoner. It is one of guilt and discomfort, but familiarity, like this isn't the first time she's been here.

She doesn't meet my eyes at first, instead gazing down at her shoes. Finally, she looks up at me. The look on her face says, I'm sorry. Forgive me?

I make the look on my face say, no.

I feel the anger of absolute betrayal come to boil inside of me, stronger even than the anger I feel for Scar.

And then he says, "you've already met my daughter, yes?"

Daughter?

I try to speak, but I can't seem to form words.

I feel sick. This all so horribly impossible and not the kind of thing that happens in real life. I decide this must be a dream, but I am past pinching my arm to try and wake up.

"She is turning out to be an excellent agent," Scar's proud voice sounds echoey, like it's coming from far away. "I sent her to find information about you. Angela and Christopher were doing a regrettably horrible job recovering your memory—that was their job after all—so I had to take matters into my own hands. When Andy's search through your notebooks proved that you hadn't remembered anything and been keeping it a secret, I decided there was nothing left to do but bring you in."

I glare at Andy, who shrinks under my gaze. "You searched my notebooks? When?"

"This morning," she reluctantly admits. "I was hiding your closet when you came up to get your bag. I didn't expect you to come back up."

Something clicks inside my head. "Wait a minute. That hairpin I found. It wasn't my sisters. It was yours, wasn't it?" I take the pin off of my bedside table.

Andy nods. I can't believe this. I toss the pin in her direction, not caring where it hits her. To my extreme annoyance, she catches it.

I want to yell at them to get out of my room, but my mind stuck is on something else Scar said. "Wait...my parents...their job?"

"Yes, their job," Scar nods. "Silly me. I forgot to tell you. Your biological parents were employees here. Your adoptive parents are as well. They work for me. In fact, they adopted you for the sole purpose of fixing your memory."

No.

No.

"No."

Scar smiles a horrible, horrible smile. "Yes."

°°°

It seems like hours before they come and get me for dinner, but it is only thirty minutes at the most.

The man who comes to get me—the same one who accompanied Andy earlier—looks around my room with a furrowed brow once he unlocks the door and steps in.

He grunts as he eyes the chaos I have created.

Desk drawers pulled open, their contents strewn about the room; innumerable black T-shirts and blue jeans tossed to the floor, taken from the dresser where they had been stocked for me; the comforter and sheets ripped from the bed, leaving its mattress bare; pillows torn open, their feathers drifting through the air like snow.

Bandages pulled from wrists and blood smeared up my forearms.

And me at the centre of it all, my eyes bloodshot.

The man blinks twice before shaking his head and stepping forward, taking my arm and yanking me to my feet.

He pulls me into the hallway and, as he shuts the door behind us, I get a good look around.

The walls are the same sterile white as the ones in my room, and are lined with door upon door upon door, each one labeled with a plaque, its words too tiny to read. The hallway seems to go on forever both ways.

The man tugs me along, and our footsteps echo through the silence.

We have only been walking for a few seconds when he pulls me to the left, throwing open a door and pushing me through. He shuts it behind me and, for a brief moment, I consider opening it again and making a break for it. I don't, though. He is probably waiting on the other side, and anyway, I didn't see any glowing exit signs on our journey past endless identical doors.

"Ah, Jackson."

I turn at the sound of his voice, and my eyes sweep the large dining room before landing on Scar, who sits at the head of a long table.

The dining room is the polar opposite of the rest of the building as far as I have seen. It is huge, decorated in pale orange and red wallpaper. There is a fireplace on one wall with a huge painting of some man I don't recognize hung above it, and the table is a dark, shiny wood with ten matching, elaborately carved wooden chairs. It looks exactly like anyone would picture the dining room in a mansion to look like. The one similarity that it has with the rest of the building is the cold, un-lived-in feeling that it possesses.

It would make anyone feel like a prisoner.

"Come sit down."

I turn towards the table at the sound of Scar's voice and frown when I see that he is not alone. He sits at the head of the table, and in the chair to his left is Andy.

I don't move, and Scar gestures for me to come forward. I hesitate before taking a few steps forward and taking a seat on the opposite head of the table. The table is at least the length of my bedroom at home, and I feel safe being as far away from Scar and Andy as possible.

I look down and examine the table setting in front of me. There are two expensive looking plates, one large one and one smaller one on top of it. To the right of the plates is one large knife, one small knife and a spoon. To the left of it is three forks, varying in size. There is also a crystal glass, glittering in the light cast by a large chandelier above the table.

I look up at the rest of the chairs and see that each place is set in the same way.

Scar smiles at my confusion and takes the large knife in hand, holding it up.

"Dinner knife," he says before setting it down and taking the small knife, "fish knife," he puts down the fish knife and picks up the spoon, "soup spoon. Dinner fork - " He takes the largest fork and holds it up. "Fish fork - " the medium fork. "Salad fork - " the smallest one.

I don't thank him for his short lesson. I know I will never remember which is which anyway. Suddenly there is the sound of the door opening from behind me, and I turn to see the burly man that escorted me from my room stepping through the door, holding the arm of another prisoner.

It is the first time I am glad to see someone in this place, because it is Michael.