“Brian, we can’t,” Kelly sobs weakly, gripping his shoulder for dear life.

                “I’m not asking you to,” Brian says as we huddle within the cramped darkness of the wall again.

                There hadn’t even been any whispered discussion.  Julia’s warning over the intercom caused enough fear to metastasize in our hearts that we were forced to listen to the maid walk right by our hiding place behind the trash can, her shoes clunking on the kitchen tile as she headed down a hallway.  No matter how desperately we wished to make ourselves known to the pepper-haired woman and save ourselves at last, it would be the equivalent of throwing the switch on a chair-strapped Gina and the newborn child of Brian and Anna, whom Julia apparently took as an opportunity to make into a junior version of herself.

                So, just like Julia ordered, as soon as Ms. Coleridge was gone, we hustled back across the floor and dove clumsily through the thick maintenance grate in the kitchen.  It was an easier squeeze going in than coming out, so even if Julia saw us make the move, there was no catching us, though at this point it somehow would’ve felt just as much of a loss as staying hidden.  We jogged through the narrow blackness for several minutes, passing spots we could’ve easily paused for to breathe and regroup, but none of us knew what to do yet, and stopping would force us to confront how truly lost we are now.

                Brian, it seems, knows what he’s got to do now, no matter how wrong it is.

                “Do you not understand?” Kelly cries.  In spite of how dehydrated we all are, she manages to find some tears to shed.

                “Yes, I do,” he says.  I can tell he means it.

                “She will kill you.  Without hesitating.”

                “I know.”

                “You won’t get to see your daughter again.  She’ll just grab you up, and it’ll be over.  Just like that.”

                “I know.”

                “What good will come of it?” she whimpers.  “Do you think it’ll be any better for anyone to have you gone, too?”

                “All I know is that she might let our child live if I go back there and give myself over,” Brian croaks, with a glistening in his eyes for Anna that’s visible even in the near-pitch space.  “I’m not going to make your decisions for you.  And I don’t have the strength left to try to force you to come with me anyway.  But I have to do this now.”

                “No you don’t,” Kelly pleads, shaking him roughly.  I consider joining her, but I’ve grown to know how dangerously stubborn Brian can be when he’s made up his mind, as he has in this moment.

                “Do you have another plan?” he asks blankly, not really needing to hear the answer.

                “No.  Not yet,” she admits with palpable remorse.  “I know you’re afraid for her.  For them.  We all are.  But this isn’t the way!”

                “It’s going to have to be,” Brian says.  His voice quavers like he might vomit.  I empathize deeply.  “Unless you have something else that won’t end with my daughter in the stomach of that… that…”

                He can’t even finish, and neither of us blame him, because he’s right.  We don’t have something else.

                We really, truly are, out of moves to make now.  No matter how far we run from Julia’s hands, even when she can’t see, taste, or feel us, our every action is still hers to command, and our bodies hers to direct toward our own graves.

                It’s over.

                Done.

                She’s got us, and even Kelly, in all her messily expressed grief, is beginning to grapple with that fact.  There will be blood on someone’s hands within the next twenty-four hours, and frankly, I can’t imagine wanting to go on if it happens to be Gina’s or the baby’s on mine.

                “Hey, fuckheads.”

                The voice is fired at us in the hush, so quiet it might’ve been mistaken for the hiss of a stray pipe, if not for the particularly distinctive formation of the word it used to address us.

                “Over here.”

                Our hearts jolt as though Julia herself had discovered us, even though the gravelly voice is not only male but coming from the inner wall, behind a cluster of crisscrossing wires.  We turn skittishly toward the darkest corner, backing a few inches away, although without raising our hands in defense.  It’s not like there’s much left to fight for.

                “You want to keep your goddamned voices down?” the source of the voice grumbles as he crawls out of the jungle of metal, his sinewy arms wrapping around a tuft of insulation for support.

                I’m surprised to see the spectral stranger is the same height as us; the voice had given me cause to expect some kind of haggard creature at least the size of a dachshund.  Rags are draped and bound economically with twist-ties around his shrunken chest and legs.  If it weren’t for the deeply etched wrinkles around his eyes, I’d guess he’s not even forty years old.  Wild, bushy facial hair takes up most of the underside of his head, and even in the dark, his eyes are more of a void than the shadows that surround us.  This, I know beyond a doubt, is an empty man.

                “Oh my God,” Kelly mutters, robbed of breath in shock.  “How…”

                “Can’t be,” Brian mutters, flabbergasted.

                “Shut it.  Are you coming, or not?” the man growls, waving a hand toward the tunnel he emerged from behind the wires, before turning and disappearing back into it.

                “Fine,” Brian says with abandon, following in, though his shoulders remain stiff: he’s just as nervous as I am.  “Guys?”

                “R-Right…” Kelly stutters as she cautiously gives chase, then turns to face me.  “Jack?”

                “Yeah, I’m… I’m coming.”

                “C’mon.  Let’s go,” she says, extending a hand for me to take, which I do, gratefully.  We might as well make a choice now, since we seem to be criminally short on such things these days.

                The tunnel is considerably cleaner and more smoothly carved than the actual inner walls we’ve been using to traverse the house, which astounds me, until I begin to realize it’s probably all the stranger’s doing.  From the look of him, he’s been in here a long time, his eyes unused to even trace quantities of daylight.

                We pass other points I recognize as openings into the inner wall, all of which we missed when we made our way to the living room.  After around ten minutes of striding single-file through the straight-lined blackness, we suddenly come into a wider space with a chilly breeze spinning through.

                What I soon recognize as a small portable book light rests on its side and clicks on with a kick from the stranger, flooding the area with just enough dim artificial glow to let us drink in the scale of this hovel, stacked high with wood chips, food wrappers, nails, and other junk I can’t quite make out.

                Kelly and I clutch our arms to our chests for warmth, our teeth chattering.

                “Here,” the scraggly man grunts, throwing something at us.  I flinch as a rag similar to his own flaps onto my sorely naked shoulders, quickly pulling it around my sides like a blanket.  As soon as I do, a coiled twist-tie hits me in the shin, gifted from the same place.  Kelly pulls one around herself too, while Brian, who was just ahead of us, is already cinching his makeshift toga.

                I relish the feeling of fabric around my skin again: protective, even though such a thing would do precisely nothing under the meaty weight of Julia’s heel if it should come crashing down on me.  Pinching the dulled material in my fingertips, slightly coarse though it, is, I recognize it as the shorn corner off a dish towel, its fibers long flattened into a smooth sheet.

                The man doesn’t even give us warning as he chucks something else at each of us.  I throw my hands up and catch against my chest the football-sized hunk of sliced bread, a little crusty with staleness, but not rotten, and that’s good enough for me.  My stomach rumbles audibly just from feeling its grainy texture in my palms, and I hear similar reactions from Kelly and Brian as they eye their bread too.  However, as much as I want to shove it between my lips and swallow without chewing, something stops me.

                This guy has obviously made something of an existence for himself down here.  I don’t know how he got into the wretched catacombs of the Mack household or why, but he’s clearly something of a ravaging survivalist.  Who’s to say he didn’t lace all these pieces with rat poison to off us?  Not that we have anything worth taking, but he may be hungrier than he’s letting on for something more than just bread.  I look over at Kelly and Brian for reassurance, and they seem to have the same thought.

                Sighing, our bizarre host takes a step forward and pulls a few crumbs from each of our chunks and shoves them in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

                “It’s food, idiots.  Eat it before I change my mind and take it back,” he grouches, a little friendlier in his own animalistic way.  We’re still not totally convinced, but with strength waning, and the probable hour of our demise approaching rapidly, the humanity in his tone is enough for me.  Greedily, the three of us begin wolfing the offerings down.

                Twenty minutes pass without another word.  Most of the bread in each of our hands gets eaten, and what doesn’t is folded reverently into our laps for later.  Eventually, the three of us get sufficiently comfortable with the possibility that the ragged individual won’t slit our throats and take a seat on a chunk of wood tall enough to act as a bench, while the man still paces around in front of us, with enough distance that we can at least settle down and focus on speaking.

                “Okay, I’m just… going to say it,” Brian chokes up at last, his strength partially renewed.  “What’s going on here?  Who are you?”

                “What’s going on is that I’m just trying to live my life,” he answers, scratching his chin through the beard.  “Just like you.  And it’s awfully fucking hard to do when you’re all yapping like you were right on the other side of the wall, where she can find you.”

                “So you… were caught by her, too,” Kelly says.  Her tone is firm, but there’s a frown curved into her brow, distrustful and curious.  Like she’s already a step ahead of the rest of us.

                “Yeah,” he spits, cuddling his rags tighter around his body.

                “And you got away,” I suggest.

                “What do you think?” he groans sarcastically.

                “So who are you?  How did you even… I mean, you must’ve been down here a long time…” Brian says, trying to piece it together.

                “Before any of you, yeah,” the man confirms.  “Two and a… no, no, three years.”

                Such a seemingly small number, yet next to the already comparative eternity I’ve spent trapped inside this house, it’s like trying to imagine infinity in concrete digits.

                “So why didn’t you get out?” Brian gawks, his tone embittered.  Slowly, he rises from our makeshift bench with his whitened fists clenched.  “Why didn’t you tell someone?”

                “Maybe the same reason you haven’t, smartass,” the man coughs.  “I’m trapped.”

                “How?” I demand suddenly, earning his attention, but I can see in the stranger’s weary and contorted scowl that he has no intention of answering.

                “Wait a second,” Kelly mumbles weakly.  She raises an accusing finger.  “Your face.  It… was in my one of my textbooks.  You’re…”
                Like a cornered animal, the man cringes and takes a few steps back, his beady eyes darting over to her, and for a second I think he might lunge at Kelly to prevent further commentary.

                “You’re Arthur Goodwin, aren’t you?” she says with a heavy swallow.

                He doesn’t nod, but the grudging glint in his dilated pupils is enough to confirm it.

                “Who?” Brian demands, rising back to his feet.  I’m wondering the same thing.  “You said he was in your book?  Why is-”

                “He’s from the Techilogic Corporation,” Kelly utters.  “He… he-”

                “What?”

                “He invented the PMRD.”